


After Culloden

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Book 3: Voyager, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-11 09:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8974972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: Weakened by fever, Jamie struggles to come to terms with the loss of Claire and the child and the fact that despite his best efforts, he is still alive. A series of missing moments from Lallybroch in'Voyager'





	1. Jamie

After Culloden 

‘Who was she, Jamie?’

 

The question and its’ answer would be simple enough if he were coherent.

 

As it was, it burns through his brain, the words searing his broken, fevered soul like a dagger to the heart and he cannot answer his sister, not yet.

 

_Who was she?_

_A simple question Jenny, but the answer, my love, I dinna ken how to tell ye!_

_She was a Sassenach. A beautifully fierce Sassenach with hair the colour of water in a burn when the light touches it and eyes of fire…_

_The love of my life._

_Mo duinne._

_Light of my soul… My own soul._

_My own sweet…_

_Claire… Mary, Mother and Bride, oh Claire!_

He must have made some involuntary whimper because the next thing he feels are hard fingers curling into his, entwining themselves around a palm that shakes with sweat.

 

‘Be still milord… Please…’

 

_Fergus?_

The hand squeezes again in reassurance.

 

‘You will be all right milord, I promise…’

 

He tries to squeeze the French pickpocket’s hand back in reassurance; but the hand that had played such a vital part in his dealings in France is being shepherded away, a firm female voice that trembles slightly breaking momentarily through the fog.

 

‘Come away lad. The Laird needs rest, ye ken?’

_Blood of my blood and bone of my bone and I swore to her… I swore…_

It seems important that they, Jenny and the others know this, yet his tongue feels impossibly heavy in his mouth, too heavy to form words, to even try and explain what she had meant to him.

 

A sudden judder of pain screams up his leg and he screams with it, the sound dying against lips too weak to open.

 

_How long had he been like this?_

And then a steady, capable hand is reaching for the back of his head, guiding shaking fingers around a horn mug; clamping them in place.

 

 _Valerian_ , his brain tells him after a moment; the voice sounding so much like Claire’s he could weep. _Lavender. Honey. Sleep now, my love, I’m here, it will all be over soon. Sleep now, I won’t leave you. I promise._

He cannot stop his hands from shaking as they are slowly guided up to meet the steaming liquid.  Cannot supress the slow flickering memories of the moments after Culloden from racing across his brain.

 

_Memories of a dead weight lying across him, black blood soaking into the scarlet captain’s coat. His tormentor’s head lying pressed against his abdomen like a spent canon ball._

_‘I have you Fraser. You are bound to me by blood and body and bone.’_

_Sharp, black eyes leer out of the shadows, eyes that had gripped him, felt him, teased and dared him to forget himself and give his body into Randall’s hands…_

_The pressure of a duelling pistol heavy in his left hand, a pistol that transfigures itself into a quill; its thick, black letters heavy against the vellum, the words that he did not have the courage to tell her aloud…_

**I am sorry.**

_A beat of desperate silence, a memory of indecision and then a final, scribbled postscript, that he had prayed she would understand._

**I must!**

_His broadsword that had quivered in the still March air; the breeze static with electricity as the Bois de Boulogne held its breath in anticipation._

_Randall’s back arched in the dew soaked grass, a pale opening of flesh exposed in the grey morning light beneath a torn stock, a wolf begging mercy with bared teeth._

_The broadsword that had been replaced by his dirk as he left the bog filled death trap of Culloden field once more to the calling of crows._

_Claire’s screams echoing somewhere through the haze of blood that had blurred his thoughts; the sudden, unquenchable need for violence that made everything else worthless, the desperate need to break Randall as he had once been broken…_

_The deadly arch of the sword twisting against his grip as he forced it down, his wrist snaking with it, weapon and arm at one with him as he feels it pierce its’ target, a sudden bloom of blackened blood staining the doeskin breeches._

‘Easy lad,’ comes a voice from beyond the fog, thick fingers reaching to slip something over his head.

 

The weight of it reminds him of standing in the courtyard of Wentworth Prison, the scaffold a shadow against a thick, grey sky.

 

His death march had been the harsh rasp of the corbies’ caw.

 

The fingers are on his chest now, the weight of whatever it is resting cold and heavy against his breastbone.

 

‘It’s a rosary laddie, dinna fret,’ the voice mutters from the fog; the unspoken shadow of the hangman’s noose ringing in the silence.

 

 Hands are reaching for his shoulders, pushing him down onto the bed and he realises with a shock that it is Murtagh.

 

Mortagh, his godfather whom he had been sure was dead; left to the mercy of the black shadows on the moor.

 

‘M…’ He cannot get the word out. It seems to be lodged in his throat, choking him as Gaelis Duncan had choked her husband at the banquet held at Leoch for the Duke of Sandringham.

 

‘M…’ He tries again, his tongue thick and heavy as the hand curls against his own, tightens to a fist as sudden tears prick against his eyelids. Scalding tears that he cannot seem to stem.

 

_Claire… Oh God, Claire!_

‘Aye lad, I’m here,’ his godfather’s touch shakes slightly as it reaches to brush a lock of sweat soaked hair from his eyes.

 

_I’m here._

_I’m here, my love._

_But where? Sassenach, where are ye?_

The cry crumples against his lips as he curls himself into Murtagh. He is a child once more clinging to a scrap of driftwood, his heart screaming with the pain of her loss, with the agony that he had not died for her. That he would have to live out the rest of his days knowing she could never be with him.

 

He does not know how long he stays there; the steady rhythms of Murtagh’s chest rising and falling against his cheek, rocking him as if he were a fretful bairn just born and not a man of five and twenty with a wife and a child...

 

The child…

_‘Who was she, Jamie?’ Jenny had asked; now bustling through the kitchen, the rising warmth of Lallybroch feeling alien to his fevered soul._

‘She… She is gone,’ he mutters finally, brokenly into Murtagh’s chest at last. For a moment he tries searching for his sister’s gaze, but his eyes; blurred and mazy with the fever cannot focus. The words are bitter to his tongue, his mind struggling to resist the pull of oblivion rising from behind his eyes. ‘Dinna speak her name to me again.’

 

They can hardly argue with him on that point. It is just Fergus whose small, firm body curls into his chest later that night, who asks Mortagh: ‘will milord be alright?’

 

‘Aye,’ Jamie hears his godfather through a break in the oblivion. He can just make out the weight of his ward’s head curled under his armpit, his arm flung across the boy’s back.

 

‘Aye, he will be. Sleep now.’

 

They do, for a time, watched from the door by Jenny, arms crossed over her apron as Murtagh pushes past into the shadowed hall, black head bowed.

 

The lamplight from the hallway flickers, the candles on the mantelpiece sending flickering shadows over her brothers face.

 

‘Ye’ll be alright James Fraser,’ she murmurs into the silence; casting one, long glance at the sleeping piles of blankets. ‘I can promise ye that.’


	2. Fergus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His master is raving when the Red Coats make their first visit and Fergus cannot let them take Jamie from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review the first chapter! Your feedback is invaluable and I really hope that you enjoy my first attempt at writing Fergus.

Fergus

He is raving when the Redcoats make their first visit.

 

Fergus, young as he is, has seen enough to know what a fevered man looks like and Jamie Fraser, lying in a tangle of sheets in the priest’s hole’s tiny cot, is delirious. Not shouting, he is too far gone for speech; but the fever is silent, deadly; refusing to allow his body the rest that it desperately craves.

 

The hand that is grasped in his refuses to be still, the long fingers twisting viciously out of his grip. The broad face is deathly pale, a dangerous flush rising against the high cheekbones, each breath caught and ragged with exertion.

 

‘Be still milord,’ he murmurs; watching the emotions that he cannot give voice to flickering, fading for a moment and then bursting out in vengeance against the ghastly pallor.

 

‘Be still, milord, _please._ They will hear you…. _They_ will come and…’

 

He does not wish to finish the thought, does not wish to look at the fluttering eyelashes, at the tense muscle in his master’s jaw as Jamie, Laird of Broch Tuarach, fought with demons that only he could see.

 

Above their heads, he can hear fists hammering on the door, hear young Jamie’s wail and the scrape of unfamiliar English voices cutting through the hall at Lallybroch.

 

He knows he should escape. Now was the time to flee, to try and find a way out of the hole and onto the moor and up towards the cave, where he knows from past experiences poaching with Rabbie McNab that if they were quiet and skirted around the back of the barn, they would not be found. But he cannot leave his lord. Cannot leave the man who had given him so much, had sacrificed so much in return.

 

The figure in the cot rears suddenly; the rosary placed there by Murtagh beating upward with the sudden movement, each word strangled as he struggles for breath.

 

 

‘No… Claire… mo duinne… Sassenach… Please… No!’

 

Hearing her name again, Fergus bends his head and murmurs a prayer for his ladies’ health and wellbeing; hoping that wherever she is, she was safe.

 

The slanted eyes fringed with soot tipped lashes are wide and caught with an emotion that Fergus has never seen in the face that he knows and loves.

 

Fear.

 

Genuine fear that only seems to worsen as Jamie struggles for breath, whole body shaking with effort.

 

‘Milord, you are safe. Please…’ He cannot help the frightened glance to the ceiling or hear the frustrated exclamation and grunt of exertion as the floorboards creak above them.

 

A prickle of trepidation courses through him at that; the thought of Jenny Fraser who had welcomed him into Lallybroch with open arms, at the mercy of the Englishmen, was too much to bear and yet he cannot leave his lord.

 

He glances again at Jamie, who is staring at him, shoulders heaving with effort, but not seeing him. He is seeing the ghosts that lie behind Fergus’s eyes, the ghosts of Prestonpans, of Culloden, a battle that he never witnessed, of Claire gathering him into her arms in Paris, of…

 

A crash overhead, the sound of a baby’s wail and the body in the cot shudders, eyes squeezing themselves tightly shut. He can only imagine what Jamie is thinking as he struggles onto the bed and takes Jamie’s left hand in a squeeze of reassurance.

 

Another crash, the sound reverberating through the broad shoulders, juddering into Fergus as he presses himself closer, tasting blood on his lower lip.

 

He will not cry out.

 

He will not give away their position.

 

‘You will be safe with me, milord. I will not let them take you,’ the whisper is hard and fast, answered by his lord’s left hand reaching to grip his; both pairs of eyes fixed on the ceiling.

 

Another crash, an oath cursed in an English accent too broad for him to understand and a scream from Jenny.

 

_What were they..? No… They couldn’t… They wouldn’t, would they?_

Behind him, his master’s chest constricts, their gripped hands shaking as a cupboard directly above their heads is kicked open. 

 

The grasp on his fingers tightens painfully, all feelings of his earlier bravado ebbing as fast as they had come.

‘Search below!’ An order is barked from the hall, the English voice sending shivers down his spine; a phantom ache rippling against his ribcage that had nothing to do with being pressed against Jamie’s chest. _If they found Jamie, then hanging would be the least of their worries. If they found Jamie, If... If… If…_

‘Laddie?’ His moment of indecision is broken by an urgent whisper somewhere in the shadows; a jolt of pain scorching his ear as Murtagh hoists him from the bed, dark eyes wide with badly concealed worry.

 

‘What in flaming hell d’ye think you’re still doing here, ye wee clot?’ A firm shake and Fergus grits his teeth, not daring to look back at the wan, pale face of his master.

 

‘I…’ He bites his tongue as he hears another scream from up above, a hiss of breath from the bed and sets his jaw.

 

‘I am protecting milord. I will stay with him _monseuir.’_

 

Each word is bitten out; the French coming without thought. It sounds harsh to a tongue now so accustomed to Scots and the occasional Gaelic; but like the wine he was weaned on, it leaves a sweeter taste in his mouth.

 

‘Aye lad,’ the big man says finally. ‘But ye cannot hope to do that alone, can ye?’

 

‘Have you a dirk then?’ It was business as always with Murtagh and Fergus cannot belay a smirk from curling at his lips.

 

‘Always,’ he reaches for the dagger that hung at his belt; the small dirk that Jamie had bequeathed him before the night attack at Prestonpans; a year and a lifetime ago now.

 

He has barely gripped the hilt before another resounding crash comes from above with the thud of boots on the stairs.

 

They were coming then.

 

They were coming and the thought makes his hands shake; the impulse to surrender and run supressed by the desperate need to protect his master, protect his clan.

 

 _You cannot run,_ the voice told him. _You can’t make this senseless, not after everything they have done for you. You can’t._

 

Without much thought he finds himself sidestepping closer towards the foot of the bed, eyes fixed on the door. Murtagh moves with him, so that both bodies now bar their master, his free hand reaching up to brush against the battered green medal that he has worn around his neck for as long as he can remember.

St Dismas, patron saint of thieves. A fine saint for his dealings on the dark streets of the Parisian underworld he thinks ruefully, but he is not so sure if the luck will follow him here.

 

More footsteps.

 

Fergus steals a glance behind him, finding his eyes fall into fevered eyes made bright with fear, seeing the almost impercetable nod of understanding.

 

‘ _Do this for me, lad. You will not be forgotten. I promise you that.’_

 

Heavy breathing on the other side of the door, a moment’s pause, or indecision, he is not sure.

 

‘A priest’s hole? Are you mad?!’

_A Redcoat with a conscious then_ , Fergus thinks grimly; tightening his grip on the dirk sheathed at his belt.

 

He steals a glance at Murtagh, who ignores him, dark eyes fixed resolutely on the door.

 

‘In the name of King George II of Great Britain and Ireland, we will rout out any Jacobite traitors that dwell behind this door!’

 

The sound of an English voice sharp with purpose and then with a blast of gunpowder, the door is gone; the vivid scarlet coats of the intruders filling the room.

 

Fergus glares at them for a second that feels like a lifetime; taking in the dark eyes, the shades of copper and brown pulled back with ribbon, the boots caked with good Lallybroch earth, the weight of the fingers gripped around aimed bayonets.

 

He shifts again, trying to block Jamie from view, not daring to take his eyes off the platoon with blood on their hands.

 

And then the moment vanishes.

 

He hears Murtagh’s roar of rage, his own feet dodging, sidestepping; hand twisting the dirk upright as a soldier makes to grab him, saber glinting in the half-light.

 

An arm catches his elbow and he thrusts the blade wildly, not knowing or caring if it meets its target.

 

A grunt of pain tells him he has as he pulls the dirk, blackened scarlet blooming over his fingers as the soldier wheels back with a roar and he springs away, all too aware of the vulnerability of his back.

 

‘Là, imbécile,’ he mutters, knowing that the English soldiers would not understand a word. He twists to meet another, feet working as if dancing, the dirk poised to lunge again. He seems to be neither child, nor man; but a sprite, a fairy falling from the stone circle at Craigh na Dun.

 

Only to see a saber arc flashing in the shadows, see Murtagh’s eyes widen in shock, body lunging too late towards him, the dark eyes of the Englishman grim with purpose.

 

All laughter gone, he steps back; the saber huge in his line of vision, the dirk blade slipping, sliding through suddenly nerveless fingers. It clatters to the floor with a ring that he cannot acknowledge, does not wish to understand.

 

_Please M’seuir… Please…_

And from the bed he hears a shout. A desperate, fevered roar that sears his heart as the world teeters perilously and he sidesteps again, desperately trying to avoid the blade.

 

‘Fergus!’

 

From somewhere in the growing gloom he hears a barked order, another burst of pain; the world spinning desperately out of control.

 

He staggers suddenly, knees dangerously close to giving way, but he would not kneel to them, he could not; not after everything he has witnessed.

 

Amid the chaos his vision begins to darken into red stained black that is shot with streaks of light. Without warning his legs give way, his whispered plea slowly slipping back into native French.

 

‘Je suis tombé, je jure

C'est la faute de Voltaire

Ou bien ce coup dur

A été traité par-‘

 

The words come without comprehensive thought, without acknowledgment and as the light begins to fade, he prays to St Dismas, to the blessed Mother, to any Saint that happened to be listening, that his body will not be forgotten.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain.
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> The song that Fergus sings at the end of this chapter is Gavroche's song on the barricade in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. 
> 
> English lyrics:
> 
> I have fallen, I swear  
> It is the fault of Voltaire  
> Or else this hard blow  
> Has been dealt by-


	3. Jenny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the chaos of the Red Coat visit, Jenny tends to Jamie's wounds and tries to remember.  
> Tries to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this. The fact that you are enjoying it means the absolute world to me and I can't thank you all enough for your feedback!
> 
> This chapter also happens to be a trifle longer than normal, just because there is so much to fit in, mostly in flashback. I hope that you don't mind.

 

Jenny 

_She waits two weeks before hearing news of him. Two, agonising, dragging weeks filled with fretful glances out of the window, the bairns tugging at her skirts, Fergus watching the gate like a silent, hook nosed dog; long body hunched over the railing, before the cart rattles into view. The gate had been locked the night before to starve off the possibility of an English ‘visit’ and she wants him, she needs him, of course she does, but the thought of the children, of the danger he will put them in, holds her back._

_Sweat pulls at the back of her hands, curling into her fingers, the fretful wail of one of the bairns, she is so tired that she does not know which one; dragging her back, clashing with the sudden, aching desire to see him. To touch him. To know that he was alive, despite it all. To know that there was some hope left in the world that was so utterly changed by the actions of the man that he followed._

_‘Madame Murray?’ Fergus watches the cart with her, eyes that hid nothing alive with curious worry. His dark curls fell into his face against the wan April sun, his hand; still soft with the clinging remnants of childhood reaching to grip her own, fingers entwining, clutching for a moment; hearts throbbing in unified, desperate worry._

_‘He will be there,’ the Parisian pickpocket says simply; a small wry smile quirking at his lips and Jenny remembers vividly when he had arrived in Lallybroch, mud splattered and all but dead from the three -day ride from Culloden House. Remembers the tiny figure staggering into the kitchen, clutching a roll of parchment, fingers frozen with the effort of riding._

_‘He promised me, milady,’ and she nods because what else can she do, torn as she is between wanting safety for the children and longing for him, needing her brother to be safe with her?_

_They fall into silence then as the cart drew closer, her heart lodged somewhere in her throat, her breath forced as she feels a small paw tug at her apron._

_‘Mam? What is it?’_

_Maggie Ellen, pale beneath her freckles, is watching her with those clear, slanted Fraser eyes that are the exact replica of her uncle’s; hand twisted in the linen._

_Jenny shakes her head, reaching out a hand to smooth the girl’s plaits; the weight of the hair grounding her, forcing her to remain within reality._

_‘Nothing, mo chridhe’, she murmurs; not daring to look at Fergus._

_Maggie sighs at that and presses herself further into her mother’s side; the comforting weight of child and motherhood briefly overcoming the panic lodged within her throat._

_A moment’s pause._

_From outside, the dogs suddenly begin their chorus, swarming into the kailyard in a pack of tails and tongues and noise and she knows that she must go now. She must go to him, before she loses her nerve._

_‘I will go to him, Madame?‘_

_She shakes her head; a forceful ‘no’, that surpasses language. She will go to him; he is her brother after all. Him and Murtagh; the last two fragments of the life she had before her marriage to Ian Murray and the loss of her Fraser name._

_The yard is chaos when she arrives, pulling down her apron, swallowing back hope, apprehension, fear of the unknown._

_Men swarm her, tipping their bonnets; eyes blank with exhaustion and she pushes forward, searching._

_So many faces gone._

 

_‘Jenny?’ She is so caught up between human and animal, that she does not see him. Impossible really, Murtagh towers above the men; an irremovable, bearlike presence in breeks and bonnet, dark eyes torn between worry and relief._

_‘He is here?’ Her voice feels distant, not her own; eyes darting towards the cart as she is pulled towards him._

_‘Aye lass’, the voice that had been such a comfort after her Mother died is grey with exhaustion, his face strained with the ghosts of the past weeks as she is pulled into an embrace that stinks of the road._

_‘He’s in a bad way, mistress. His leg…  Fever ye ken?’ Buried in his coat, she hardly hears him. She could deal with fever but she needs to see him, needs to know that he is alive._

_He is lying in a mess of straw when they finally reach him that stinks of death; bandaged leg stained black with blood. The broad, Fraser face is slick with sweat; the bones too prominent, his cheeks hollow, breathing a heavy rasp that bubbles in his throat. His shirt hangs off him, the shivers of chill and fever all too visible. She swallows, taking in his juddering breaths, the tightening of his jaw as he hisses out a gasp of agony, the pantomime of emotions almost invisible had she not been his sister._

_‘Jamie? Jamie, mo chride?’_

_He stirs at that, long, full lashes fluttering, a crack of limpid blue eyes that are blurred with fever finally made visible._

_An intake of breath, his eyes clearing into something that could be hope; clearing for a second that is too short for her to take it in._

_‘Claire? Sassenach… I…’_

_The words cut her. They tear a weeping wound into her heart that cannot be healed as he stares at her; taking her in for a second that feels like forever._

_Of course he would think she was Claire, the rational part of her brain tells her; but that does not stop it from hurting._

_‘Not Claire, Jamie,’ she says at last; fighting to keep her voice steady. She can feel the tears prick behind her eyes, small daggers of salt that she cannot shed, a small wobble threatening to break free as she says his name._

_He stares at her, uncomprehending; blinking in the gloom._

_‘Jenny. Your sister, ye ken?’ The tears come before she can stop them and she is scrambling into the cart, the death trap of fleas and straw and blood and muck; wanting nothing more than to pull him into her arms as she had so often done when they were bairns._

_She wants to hold him, to comfort him, to banish his hurts as she had done when their father had beaten him with the strap. To strap his palm with aloe juice and dock leaf, to quench the fire that raged beneath his skin and whisper sweet nothings that brought comfort to them both._

_But she cannot do any of that._

_Not yet._

_Instead she watches helplessly as the wide, handsome face, battered and bruised with muck, fever and cold struggles, the emotions as easy to read as any book._

_‘Jenny,’ he says finally, slowly, as if saying her name for the first time, tongue savouring each syllable in a way that breaks her heart._

_Had he said her name, the outlander, the stranger, the Sassenach; like that? Had he savoured it, felt it warm and new on his tongue?_

_‘Jenny,’ he repeats it again, face flooding with colour, the name caught in a sudden breath of pain and she nods, reaching for him, dress catching on wet, stinking straw, crawling like a child not yet walking to meet him._

_‘Jamie,’ she moves slowly, gingerly, fingers skimming straw, not looking at his leg; blood mixed with pus staining the bandage; a sure sign of infection._

_All she sees is him, the weight of his face in her hands; the dark smudges caressing his eyelids, the freckles and pockmarks and whorls of skin that she had traced in her dreams._

_‘You’re home’, she manages finally, the words come choked, brittle in the silence._

_‘Aye’, he murmurs finally, exhaustion blooming against ice white cheeks, a small, pained grin quirking at his lips.  His body slumps suddenly against the cart, head drooping into her lap. ‘Aye, I am that.’_

*

Bowl of scalding water. Razor freshly stropped. Towel. Soap unwrapped from Cousin Jared in France smelling of lavender. A decanter of whiskey mixed with camomile. A phial of laudanum. Fresh bandages and a new poultice. A dagger. Wilowbark tea.

 

She leans against the sword chest in the hall, the weight of her elbows pushing against the worn, carved Oak that had been at Lallybroch for longer than she can remember burnished ruddy gold by the fading sunset seeping through the front door. To her back lies the kitchen, the warmth and comfort of food and children and home slashed open by the intrusion of the English. She had sent them to bed early that night, wanting to be alone in the soft quiet of late evening, away from the racket of the thirteen children that frequented the house. Wanting to try and compose herself before she went to the priest’s hole.

 

_Wanting to try and forget how Mrs Kirby had brought Fergus up into the kitchen, cradling the lad in arms that shook; the cunning face stripped of its usual grimaces and poses, the faint pulse juddering at his neck the only sign of life. The boy’s left arm lay at an angle that told her at once that his collar bone was broken. She knows that he would have wanted Murtagh, but he is gone; arrested in a flurry of fists and rope and iron to be taken to Fort William._

_They had taken him up to the nursery then and she had forced whiskey down his throat whilst she set the bone, watching the shock of dark hair falling onto a face blanched white with pain, devoid of all the familiar contours that she had come to associate with him. The slightly hooded eyes were squeezed tightly shut as the good hand scrabbled desperately at the quilt, upper teeth biting hard on his lower lip before she had taken it between both of her own and told him that he could cry out if he wanted._

_‘No… Milord… He will hear, non?’_

_She had thought that she did not have enough tears left to shed as he said that; the long lashes fluttering, the words spoken in a voice that was blank with anxiety and pain._

_Did her brother know how much he meant to the French boy who had become such a part of the fabric of Lallybroch that she cannot remember life without him?_

_‘No lad, he’ll no hear’, he had been told by voices gruff with emotion as she had taken her cue and forced the bone back into place._

_‘Ye did well’, she had managed finally, tying off the bandage and sinking to her knees beside the bed, rubbing a palm over the crop of dark hair. ‘Thank you.’ There was nothing more that she could say; watching a small, pained smile caress Fergus’s lips as he was coaxed into sipping a thimbleful of whiskey, grimacing ruefully at the taste._

Forcing the memories back, she pushes away from the chest and takes up the weight of the tray once more. She must not allow them overpower her, she could not, not when there was so much to be done.

 

She finds him dozing in the priest hole cot; the soft, afternoon light from the tiny window dancing over a face tight with pain. His face is less flushed than it had been, but still she can see the tell- tale signs of fever lingering, waiting to bloom beneath the broad cheekbones.

 

His hair is a mane of copper against the pillow, lights of russet, blonde and auburn spilling over the pillow.

 

‘Jenny.’

 

She moves slowly towards the bed, a hiss of badly supressed pain escaping his lips.

 

‘Aye, I’m here. I’m here,’ she murmurs; shifting the tray onto his knees and pulling the tiny hardback chair towards the bed, her free hand reaching to feel his forehead. The heat is still there, but it is not as vicious as it had been and for that, she thinks, she should be grateful.

 

His leg, though, is another matter.

 

Pouring a glass of whiskey, she adds a good measure of laundanum and hands it to him, watching the sceptical eyebrows raise just a fraction, narrowing her eyes in reply.

 

‘You will need it, ye clotheid. This will hurt.’ With a grunt, he accepts it, fingers trembling as they clutch the glass, blue eyes shivering with exhaustion. He had never been one to deal well with pain.

 

‘How is it?’ The question comes from gritted teeth as firm, quick fingers pull back the coverlet, his head turned firmly away from the wound. She cannot blame him and wishes that she had brought something for him to bite on as she begins to pull the bandage away.

 

She cannot answer him, instead pulls the bandage free and cuts the poultice loose, trying desperately not to look at the black bruised skin, the wound rimmed with yellow pus.

 

_How did he stand it? Oh mo chride, Jamie I am so sorry!_

An unintelligible shout pulls her back as she feels a hand grab hers; fingers squeezing desperately, thick bones almost crushing in their grasp.

 

‘I know,’ she murmurs, not looking at him, knowing that if she does, she would lose her nerve completely as she plunges the fresh poultice into the bowl. The water scalds her fingers, blood blooming over her tongue. ‘I know,’ she hears herself again squeezing his hand, wishing it wasn’t so as the poultice is pressed down, steam rising from the wound in a hiss that forces his pelvis up in a thrust of agony.

 

‘Fergus?’ She hears him say finally, the name a silent, desperate question as she continues to hold the poultice in place.  The heat is slowly receding through her fingers, but the word is still bitten out through gritted teeth as she ties off the bandage and helps him drink the tea.

 

‘He’ll live,’ she replies, her voice sounding strange; the events of the morning seeming a lifetime ago. ‘They…’ She swallows audibly, focusing on his leg, trying to forget the shouts that had echoed through the house, the leering broken toothed grin of the soldier who had meant to grope her had he had not been fought back by the boys.

 

‘They broke his collarbone, but its’ been set. He’s strong, is Fergus,’ the words come in a rush, tumbling from her tongue before she can think. He nods slowly and she can see that he is tiring, the little colour that had flooded his cheeks receding. The shaving would have to wait, she thinks. She is unsure whether to laugh or to cry whilst looking at him and contents herself with pressing her lips to his knuckles, the callouses that rub against her lips assuring her once again that he is real. She just hopes that she can wait before he asks her about Murtagh, unsure how to tell him that his godfather and her husband are in a wagon rattling down to Fort William.

 

‘Ye’ll be alright?’ She asks at last after a beat of silence, thinking of the hare pie that she had meant to bake for tomorrow, the tallow that needed to be kneaded for candles. The light is fading from the windows, the sun is setting in a graceful arc over the hills, the moor burning in his eyes. ‘Or d’ye want me to stay?’

 

‘Stay, _mo chride._ Please. _’_ he murmurs tiredly, eyelids drooping, the sweet prospect of oblivion all too promising as she takes his hand; small, tight fingers enveloped by his own.

 

Overhead, she hears one of the kitchen maids tap their way to the pantry, oblivious. The cry of grouse from over the moor. The house slowly contracting itself into a twilight quiet. 

 

Life goes on, she thinks, watching her brothers’ face, relax into something like sleep.

 

Life goes on, but she just hopes that he will be there to share it with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review!
> 
> Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	4. Murtagh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the road to his trial, Murtagh remembers Culloden and the man who he had vowed to save from the battlefield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this! Your feedback is invaluable and I really hope that you enjoy Murtagh.

Murtagh

16th April 1746

 

They had begged mercy for Giles McMartin and Frederick Murray. The boys had been white faced and shaking, watching the English officers declare their sentence with exhausted grey eyes. They were barely seventeen as they sat pressed up against a wall that shook in the grim howl of the wind.

 

The request had not been granted and Murtagh had waited in silence, Jamie’s head pressed into his lap, a snarl of curls caught between stiff, blackened fingers. It was only the weight of it that had kept him grounded. Only the knowledge that he must return his laird to Lallybroch, to Claire, or to the memory of her at least, to Jenny, in keeping with the promise that he had made her in the stillness of her Mother’s rose brier, that kept him from giving himself up.

 

His godson’s lips were tinged blue, moving silently through the Act of Contrition. _Mon Dieu, je regrette…_

The grip on his shirt is the one thing that holds him, the weight of rough fingers, the lines of a cut against a sword palm drying into his skin. He is glad of it, glad of the weight of Jamie pressed against him, glad of the stinging sensation of blood against bone, a silent reminder that if he dies before he can follow out his promise, then at least he will have not have died for nothing.

 

The major had given them one hour. One hour left in a farmhouse that smelt of death, one hour to remember the smell of the heather, the cry of pewitts on the moor, the sunset blazing over Lallybroch, the fresh tang of the crisp Spring air that gave more sustenance than any elixir of life.

 

And so they sit, or lie, or press up paper against the bare stone wall and write dogged, illiegible letters to relatives already sick with grief. A beat of gladness fills his heart at the fact that he has no such obligations, as a Fraser, his family or what Is left of it, are here; contracted into the long, shivering body of the Laird of Broch Tuarach.

 

The high, frightened voice of Giles McMartin rises from beside the door, choking itself with small, hiccoughing sobs; a desperate plea that echoes eerily against the silent resignation that comes with death’s drumbeats.

 

 _‘_ _A Maithair… A Maithair…’_

 

It sounded like a prayer, but of course it wasn’t.

 

Jamie’s grasp on his shirt is weakening, his attempts at absolution drifting into a feverish murmur.

_‘Sassenach… Mo ghraidh… Mo nighean don… It won’t be long now, my love… But, I… I am afraid… So verra afraid Sassenach…’_

‘Ye’re not going anywhere, ye wee clot,’ Murtagh hears himself mutter into the intermittent silence, giving the slumping shoulders a firm shake; blinking back the sudden stabs of salt that pricked hard at the corners of his eyelids, voice thick and heavy as his fingers tighten around those of his Laird’s.

 

‘Am I no’?’ A small smile quirks at Jamie’s lips, a sliver of distant, mazy blue cracking through long, full lashes. ‘What makes ye so… so sure?’  

 

The room is full of shadowed silence, the final men of Charles’s doomed crusade contemplating their final minutes in the mortal world; wondering what awaited them. Jenny’s promise would be safe here.  

 

‘I made a promise. A promise ye ken? To your sister, to bring ye home.’

 

‘Home?’ He starts at that, the smile vanishing as quickly as it had come.

 

A defiant shake of the head, the action so reminiscent of Jamie in childhood that he would weep if he had the strength.

 

‘I canna go home Murtagh! Ye ken that! I swore to her…’

 

_Ye swore to her that that you would die, ye bloody great fool! Yes, I ken fine well what you swore!_

 

The words are bitten out, breaking off in a hiss of pain as the world tilts drunkenly, Jamie’s fingers slipping against Murtagh’s shirt and he tightens his grip to a fist, feeling cold fingers tremble against his own.

 

‘I promised your sister’, he says finally, the words echoing eerily through the silence. Several of the men look up at that, the words harder to process than the small, flat cracks that echo at intervals across the moor.

 

They were the lucky ones he thinks in a sudden wave of bitterness, a bullet in the head seemed preferable to this agonising wait.

 

In his arms, he feels Jamie shift, head turned towards the wall, lips moving in what could be silent prayer.

 

Prayer that the men from Lallybroch who had made it to the road had started early enough to the remote sanctuary of his lands. Prayer that Fergus had bided his words and slipped away with the Deed of Sasine and Donas.

 

Prayer that…

 

‘Mo caraaidh…’ Jamie’s voice is distant, a thin thread broken by a heaving, hacking cough that shudders through him, juddering into Murtagh’s chest. In the slowly lightening gloom, he can just make out tears trickling slowly from half closed eyes; the cheekbones blooming with effort.

 

‘Aye lad. I’m here,’ he murmurs, knowing that it is not him that Jamie craves, but Claire, the Sassenach who had fallen into their lives and changed them irreversibly.

 

‘She will be safe,’ he manages finally, unsure whether the words are for him, or for the man in his arms, clinging to life by a thread.

 

Outside the cottage, the bodies continue to burn. The smoke is thick, stinking of heather and peat, the underlying note of roasting meat all too clear. He remembers the stories that they had told the bairns when they were small, that the English were savages and on campaigns where food was scarce, they raided villages, killed the men, raped the women and spiked the babies on pikes for a bit of meat. No doubt English bairns were told the same but in reverse, he thinks ruefully.

 

By the window, he can make out the huddled shapes of Duncan McDonald and Ewan Cameron wrapped in tattered plaid. In the spikes of wane afternoon light, Ewan reaches to cross himself; the hoarse whisper echoed in a mumbled reprise by his fellows.

 

‘May we find as much mercy.’

 

*

 

The memories of those dragging April hours are the one thing that keeps him from going insane in the jolting wagon from Lallybroch to Fort William. That and the comforting weight of Ian Murray, face blank, hands pressed lightly into his own.

 

‘We will see them again, my friend,’ Ian had promised him as they had been shoved into the wagon, Young Jamie’s shouts of protest still ringing in their ears, although the worry sparking through his dark eyes told him otherwise.

 

The chains that clamp their wrists prevent much movement, but Ian’s head rests lightly on his shoulder, eyes lightly closed in a feigned attempt at sleep. He remembers the wagon ride from the cottage with Jamie and the other Lallybroch men who had been spared at the mercy of Lord Melton. Remembers the exhausted laughter at the appearance of the English major with his freshly polished boots and pressed coat and his call for those who were innocent, that had rippled in the final moments before those who could stand had been led out to meet their fate.

 

 _Innocent?_ It still made him bark with laughter. _How could they have been innocent in their ragged tartan huddled at the edge of the slaughter field, the smoke of battle still stark on their faces?_

But now he only felt relief.

 

Relief that he had kept his promise, that he had delivered Jamie back to Jenny and the safety of his lands, that there was now nothing left to do but wait.

 

It felt almost selfish to feel such a thing. Selfish, because unlike Ian, he has no family, no dependants and can meet his fate with a clear conscious. It all depended on where they were being taken, from Fort William where they would be tried and then, if not hanged, then to Inverness for further questioning as Jacobite sympathisers

 

He just hopes that Jenny will send one of the boys with the rain splattered, barely legible Deed of Sasine, for Ian’s sake, if not his own. Imagines her complaining at the kitchen table to whichever of the servants or children present that the English had no business devilling them so, not when the deed declared Jamie’s abdication from the role and the rise of Young Jamie, a sharp six-year-old, as Laird of Broch Tuarach.

 

‘Will we be hangitt, d’ye think?’ Ian’s voice is quiet, void of emotion.

 

He doesn’t know.

 

Ian had not been present at Culloden, like so many of the men whom Jamie had spared, unlike himself.

 

‘We’ll be whatever is the English pleasure, no doubt’, he says at last, thinking of Jamie’s face blanched white with pain and shock in the rising shadows of the priest hole as he was dragged away, Fergus’s limp form crumpled at the foot of the bed.

 

‘Aye,’ Ian agrees after a moment’s silence; watching the chinks of light dance through the slats between the wagon’s covers as they rumble on towards their fate.

 

Murtagh can think of nothing to say to that, but presses the rosary hung at his neck, thinking of Ellen. Ellen, whose smile was echoed so sweetly in the face of the Sassenach, now lost to the mists of time and the stones at Craigh na Dun, whose eyes were saved forever on her son.

 

‘Dinna be afraid, laddie. _A bhalaiach_. It doesna hurt a bit to die.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	5. Ian Murray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the way to Fort William, Ian and Murtagh face their trial; their hearts and minds filled with their loved ones and those who are so easy to lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this so far! 
> 
> Your feedback is utterly invaluable and I really hope that you enjoy some tying off of ends regarding Ian and Murtagh.

Ian Murray

The wagon jolted its way into Fort William as dusk falls on the second day. The streets are eerily quiet, the tramp of the English patrols’ boots against the cobbles echoing against a silently watchful town.

 

Ian aches all over. His wooden leg is stiff and sore from being held in the same position, the manacles on his wrists making it impossible to move. He knows that he can bear it, knows that he must bear it, for Jenny’s sake as much as his own. Beside him Murtagh stares ahead at their two escorts, face purposefully blank. They were boys little older than Fergus and Rabbie McNab, their faces blanched pale with badly concealed fear, rising from the stiff, pressed collars of their uniforms. A visible tremble shudders through the clutched bayonets whenever the wagon hits a hole in the road.

 

Jamie’s ghost hangs between them. A shy, crooked smile; the weight of worn fingers all but crushing their own; high, fine cheekbones, the slanted Fraser eyes, the scent of ale and freshly baked bread that clung to him like a second skin. A full, quick mouth tapered with worry or set with pain, a look that he had seen so often mirrored in his wife’s face or else flowering into a charming smile. 

 _‘I will find you again_ , _mo_ _caraaidh,’_ the eyes seem to say as they swim before Ian’s line of vision, hazy and indistinct, but still defiantly belonging to the Laird of Broch Tuarach. ‘ _Whether it is in this world or the hereafter, I will find you.’_

 

_He remembers the first time he had seen those eyes crack open after the Lallybroch men had been returned from Culloden; the pupils blurred and bright with fever, swimming with a grief that only he could feel. Jamie had been carried into the kitchen by Murtagh wrapped in a ragged Mackenzie airsaid blackened with blood. His body had been too long to be placed in much comfort on the sofa, so Jenny had had a camp bed set up by the fire; his skin burning to touch. Ian remembers the cracked lips, the voice that he knows and loves little more than a scraping, trembling whisper, hoarse from lack of use. Remembers how Jenny had cried out, a silent, desperate noise and ran to her brother, pulling him into a wordless embrace._

_‘Mo nighean don… Brown haired lass…’_

 

He is so caught up in his musings that he does not feel the wagon coming to a jolting halt. It is only when one of their escorts brushes his shoulder does he realise that the wagon has reached its’ destination. The boy starts when he looks up, the fear of a Scotsman looking him in the face all too apparent and his heart twists in a feeling almost akin to pity at seeing him so afraid.

 

‘Dinna be afeared laddie,’ he murmurs, the weight of his manacles cutting against his wrists as he is forced towards the door; thinking of Jamie, of Jenny, of Young Jamie, of Fergus and the tenants of Lallybroch, faces trapped in a game that none of them could explain coherently.

 

A visible tremor flinches through the boy and he sets his jaw, the action so reminiscent of Fergus, of Jamie as a bairn, that Ian cannot help but feel a smile curl tentatively at his lips.

 

‘God help ye man’, he says at last and stoops to follow Murtagh, the rough weight of his wooden leg digging into his breeks.

 

Searing, smoke tinged air smacks his face as he is hustled through the granite archway and into the courtyard. After the stuffiness of the wagon, even the cold, urban air of Fort William feels as sweet as any evening spent on the moor.

 

The butt of a bayonet is pressed to his back and he is pushed forward, the reassuring height of Murtagh topped with the pale blue bonnet, towering before him. The weight of the manacles, the cry of a street vendor somewhere near the pier. The shadow of the scaffold rising like a ghost out of the courtyard. His bowels grumble suddenly and his hands clench themselves into fists, prickles of sweat erupt into skin burning with cold.

_Pater noster, qui es in coelis…_

 

 His lungs crave air and he gasps, drawing in deeply, refusing to take his eyes off Murtagh’s back. If they are in sight of each other, it would be alright.

 

If Jenny had sent one of the boys with the Deed of Sasine and they arrive before they are brought before a judge, then it would be alright.

 

They walk slowly, the manacles clanking eerily in the stiff, grey silence. From one of the prison tower, he hears the rasp of a corbie’s crow, a shadow swooping down to meet them and then veering away; a smudge of black against the shadowed scaffold.

 

Murtagh turns as the bird passes and smiles a thin, tight lipped smile that is dripping with irony.

 

How fortunate they were that the bringer of death was coming to pay them a visit before the endless walk to the scaffold! A bitter laugh bubbles in his throat and he bites it back, knowing it is not worth his life, worthless though it is now, to provoke the English on either side of him.

 

They are taken to a large hall filled with row upon row of benches. The slashed windows divided by bars; the thin April sun filtering down onto a stack of papers and the bent head of an English captain who barely glances at their guards.

 

‘Suspected Jacobite sympathisers milord. Known to have had connections with the notorious Clan MacKenzie’, one of the guards stands crisply to attention and clicks his heels; his voice sounding high and fragile in the stiff stillness of the room. Ian catches his breath at that, stealing a glance at Murtagh whose face is slowly darkening with silent rage, an all too apparent growl rumbling in the back of his throat.

 

‘Take them. Separate them if you must,’ the voice from the desk sounded almost bored, the words full of crisp, cold composure. _A fine example of a Sassenach speaking with a burnt tongue_ , Ian thinks drily. His bowels, not sharing the same humour, gurgled with dread at the prospect of the separation, at what would inevitably come to pass.

 

_May God preserve my sons and keep them from the terrors that their fathers have committed. Amen._

A sharp tug at the manacles around his wrists pulls the prayer abruptly short and Murtagh’s voice in a deadly whisper that would have sent shivers down his spine, had the man not been almost a father to him.

 

‘At least let me say goodbye, ye daft gawk!’ Dark eyes flash ominously and he sees the solider, a private no doubt thrust into this mess with little experience, with the clinging remnants of childhood fat still clinging to a face slowly chiselling out into manhood, step back, eyes wide.

 

The hand that reaches slowly to grasp his is steady. Only a flash of emotion that could be so easily missed betrays the fear and pain that lies beneath his eyes.

 

‘Christ keep you Ian,’ the older man whispers and with a quick glance to the impatient private, presses his lips to his cheek; the kiss tasting of smoke and salt and loss, ‘I will see ye soon, I expect.’

 

Ian can only nod, his throat feeing blocked and hollow all at once. For so long they have feared this moment, but had never thought that it would happen, not now, not like this…

 

‘And you Murtagh. _Mo caraaidh,’_ the Gaelic is hoarse, coming to him as naturally as breathing and the beginning of a smile curls beneath the dark beard.

 

*

He is taken to a cell that is reached through a maze of doors. His wooden leg is persistent in its aching like a fretful bairn and his heart weeps for Jenny. For Lallybroch. For Jamie. For home.

The corridor stretches on forever beyond the bars. They had stripped him of the manacles around his ankles, but his wrists are still clamped; the iron rubbing welts of pain against the skin.

 

There is no chance of freeing the buckles, much less point, as the soldiers would surely berate him for it.

 

The cell floor is strewn with dirt ridden straw, a thin mattress and a ragged blanket piled in the corner with a chamber pot in the other. It smells of death, of an unknown, prolonged suffering that makes his skin crawl. From the shadows, he hears the scuttling footsteps of a rat darting into the shadows and forces his eyes to the ceiling.

 

_Mary, Mother and Bride… Jenny…. Jenny mo chiride… can ye ever forgive me?_

But the image of her; that sweet, strong face with its Fraser nose and wide, dark eyes melts into the first time he had seen Jamie’s leg; the wound deadly purulent, black bruised skin giving way to the angry red of inflammation; the seeping, sweet-sour smell of the inflected discharge that wept against the starkness of the bandage.

 

_How had he borne it? How would he bear it?  A bullet to the head would have been preferable, more honourable surely, than the prolonged pain and delirium of infection._

He drifts off slowly; hugging the weight of the floor beneath him, Jenny’s voice supporting his slumber, the soft weight of his son’s hands pressed in his dreams. _Would he ever see Young Jamie again? Would the babe that Jenny was carrying ever know their father?_

‘Get up, Scottish bastard! You’re to be seen!’ A thudding kick to his shin jolts him back to wakefulness. The voice is prodding, impatient and he thinks of Murtagh, thinks of the boys back at Lallybroch, thinks of Jenny…

 

_May Christ keep you, mon nighean don._

 

He follows the soldier blindly; the manacles on his arms rubbing red and raw.

 

They walk back through the maze of corridors, each darker than the last. _How much time had passed?_ He has no way of knowing, no way of telling; the intermittent chinks of light flittering through the high windows, giving no explanation.

 

It is only when they reach the hallway and the shadow of Murtagh looms from in front of the desk, does his leg give way, a breath that he did not know he was holding exhaled in a hiss of pain.

 

_He was still alive. There was still some hope after all._

 

The private clicks his tongue in his distaste and heaves him upright; the thin bones of a hand not yet broken to the sword tight beneath the skin.

 

At the desk, the captain, the same captain who had overseen their entrance into the prison, looks up from his ledger; mild interest sparking within narrow, grey eyes.

 

‘Ian Murray? Laird of Broch Tuarach?’ He cannot supress an involuntary, internal wince at that; cold trickles of dread working their way down his throat as his eyes chance a glance at Murtagh, looking resolutely ahead, only to see his mouth twitch slightly. The Deed of Sasine had not made an appearance, yet.

 

Straightening, he nods; calm, collected, impassive.

 

‘I am,’ he swallows dryly, the thin scrape of a pen that he had not noticed before rasping against the silence. A sandy haired clerk with a slight hook to his nose in an English uniform sits at a desk in the corner of the room by one of the windows, a puddle of light spilling against the crisp, yellow vellum of the parchment.

 

The captain flicks his eyes to the clerk and back again; fixing Ian with a stare like a snake, unblinking, unnerving; only the muscles of his jaw showing signs of life.

 

‘Speak carefully. Anything you say can be used as evidence.’

 

_Evidence for what? It was not as if they were going to be subjected to a fair trial, was it? More likely, if this interrogation went the way that he suspects that it might, they would be hung, cut down and quartered as Jacobite traitors; their heads to be sent to London as a symbol of the crushed Stuart cause._

_Thank God Jamie was still at Lallybroch!_

A sudden bolt of pain spasms up his wooden leg and he bites back a grunt, the pain juddering through the top of his head. He staggers for a moment, willing for the dizziness to pass and misses the next question.

‘As laird, do you hold symapthies with Charles Stuart, lately the figurehead of the doomed Jacobite Rising?’ The question is impatient, sending a streak of fear through Ian. He is unable to withhold his position as Laird of Broch Tuarach without placing Jenny and the clan lands at risk and yet if he is to remain alive, he must forfeit the role.

 

‘I do.’ The words are not his own. Bewildered, he glances frantically at Murtagh; the dark eyes flashing dangerously at the captain. ‘Ian was no a’ Culloden. He didnae fight, not wi’ a wooden leg, ye ken? But I did. I fought for the Prince _Tearlach_ for what good it did me!’ The words are spat out in a venomous rage; not directed, Ian realises, at the Captain, but at the Bonnie Prince, who had hidden behind the lines and watched the Highland army; good, strong, brave, fiercely loyal men slaughtered by the might of Cumberland’s forces. Watched Jamie and so many others reduced to shadows of their former selves.

 

The captain ignores him, grey eyes boring into Ian. ‘Be that as it may,’ he says after a beat of silence. ‘But that does not withhold the fact that you are Laird of Broch Tuarach and willingly supported the Stuart cause?’ The question is quiet, spoken almost without emotion.

 

Ian forces himself to swallow, the phlegm thick in his throat. At the window, the clerk is still scribbling frantically, glancing up every so often to be assured that he had the conversation in its entirety. His eyes are a sharp, pale blue fringed with green; a bloom of blonde caressing his lower jaw.

 

‘I…’ The words are stuck, the faces of Jenny, of his children, of Jamie, of the Lallybroch tenants swimming before his eyes. So many faces, so many lives whose very existence hung in what was said in the next few minutes.

 

‘The Lairdship of Broch Tuarach lies with my son, sir,’ his voice shakes slightly at the thought of Young Jamie, but he swallows and carries on. ‘The boy is six years old, he has no notion of political sympathy, Jacobite or otherwise.’  

The captain takes this with a nod, glancing at the clerk who still sat scribbling frantically on the parchment by the window.

 

‘Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser is part of my clan. My son’s godfather,’ the lie feels bitter to his tongue but, even as Murtagh glances at him in horror, he knows that it is for the best. The less that is said of James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser, the less that his existence is even acknowledged here, the better.

 

‘I see,’ the captain muses; glancing back down at his papers as if for clarification and then presses his chin to his fisted thumbs. Ian can see that he does not believe a word.

‘The patrol that visited Lallybroch yesterday found evidence of weapons,’ the captain’s voice is still unnervingly calm as he reaches for a desk drawer.

Sweat prickles at the back of Ian’s neck as he watches, helpless. He knows as well as Murtagh does what the penalty for holding weapons in the Highlands is. Knows as well what weapon it is, the only one that Jenny had been stubborn enough not to hide.

 

_‘They willnae look up in the Laird’s room, surely?’ She had asked, dark eyes flashing as Brian Fraser’s blade ran across her palms, daring him to contradict her._

But they had, evidently. They had kicked open the sword chest that lay under the Laird’s bed, their bed, Jamie and Claire’s bed, and pulled out the tenth century Viking blade, passed down from Fraser father to son through generations.

 

‘You know what the punishment is, I am sure,’ the English voice is still calm, almost questioning, daring for a reply.

 

Ian feels himself nod mechanically, bowels grumbling in fear. He cannot look at Murtagh. Cannot make his brain understand what he knows to be truth, that they will die swinging from the gallows and his children… His children…

 

‘Sir!’ The sound of a door being kicked open breaks the tension like a knife slicing its way through butter.

 

‘Yes?’

 

A flicker of annoyance passes through the calm, unreadable features and the captain pushes himself up from the desk, face turned towards the door.

 

A private stands to attention, looking sham faced, clicking his heels together as he hoists a wriggling body by the shirt collar into the air for closer inspection.

 

A very familiar looking body, kicking and wriggling for all its’ might.

 

Ian lets out a breath that he forgot he was holding, his heart slipping somewhere between his feet.

 

Rabbie McNab.

 

Rabbie McNab with the Deed of Sasine.

 

‘Let me go, ye bloody English cunt! _A mihic a diabhoil!’_ Rabbie squirms in the bewildered soldier’s grasp and sinks his teeth into the man’s knuckles, his actions earning a yelp of pain and an ungraceful drop to the floor.

 

The captain watches this in silence, taking in the mud stained boy with the wild, dark eyes, hands grasped around a role of vellum.

 

The private glares at the boy, sucking the pain out of his bloody knuckles.

 

‘Sir,’ he manages at last. ‘This boy was found wandering outside the prison gates. Said ‘e ‘ad a Deed of Sasine or somethin’ for the release of a Mr Ian Murray an’ a Mr Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser.’

 

Beside him Ian can feel Murtagh stiffen, both sets of eyes on the form of Rabbie who was now upright and glaring at the private.

 

‘Indeed?’ The captain’s interest was piqued once more, the old, unreadable mask of grey eyed calmness firmly back in place. By the window, the clerk was watching with wide eyes.

 

‘Give it here boy,’ he says at last with an outstretched palm over the desk; directing the command to Rabbie who glares silently back before edging forward and carefully handing over his burden, quickly scuttling over to Ian.

 

‘What the flaming hell d’ye think you’re doing here, ye wee clotheid?!’ Ian cannot keep the edge from the mouthed words as Rabbie shrugs.

 

‘Interesting, very interesting,’ the captain was pouring over the faded, barely legible parchment. ‘Dated 23rd July in the year of Our Lord 1745. Very interesting indeed, don’t you think so, Hawthorne?’ He glances over at the frantically scribbling clerk who catches his gaze and nods briefly before returning to his notes.

 

‘It seems,’ he addresses the room at large. ‘That you are not to be tried or hung at all. That the Lairdship of Broch Tuarach does belong to your son. You are free to go.’

 

 A flat hand rubs his chin, grey eyes searching Ian’s face, daring him to speak.

 

He has nothing to say.

 

Nothing that could convey the sheer scale of gratitude to Jenny, to Rabbie, to the fact that they are finally, finally going home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! 
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> P.S I would highly recommend listening to Outlander's Season 2 soundtrack whilst reading this chapter, especially the heartbreaking track, 'Leave the Past Behind', as it really puts everything into perspective.


	6. Jamie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fever breaks on the day a Red Coat Patrol come for Ian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this so far! Your feedback is utterly invaluable and I can't thank any of you enough for sticking with me!

Jamie 

_He is dead._

_He has been sure of this fact, but then death does not come with the searing agony of something cracking against his leg. Death does not come with the feeling of hot and heavy palms pushing against him, forcing him back._

_Death does not come with a sudden, choking sensation, his reflexes gagging, fighting against a hard something that tasted of Laudanum, fighting against the hands that clamped themselves around his jaws and held them fast._

_Death does not come in an incomprehensible string of Gaelic that he can barely make out, the weight of shaking fingers slipping and sliding through his own._

_‘Hush now… Mo ghraidh… Hush now… Mo chridhe… Hush now…’_

_White hot demons scream through his leg; the searing agony pushing a groan to the fore of his lips, but he is too weak to fight them off. In any case, if this were Purgatory as he believes it is, he would be tormented by them for an eternity, it was best to leave them to their baiting._

_The last time he had felt like this had been the hazy, dragging hours after Culloden. Hours punctuated by short, flat cracks across the moor, the stench of burning flesh, Murtagh’s hands gripping his, the stinging warmth of Claire’s cut fading against his palm._

_Hours blurred by the heat of the battle that he could remember nothing about, save the weight of his tormentor’s head lying across his chest like a spent cannonball. Hours spent reliving the scent of Claire’s hair, the coarse strands running through his fingers as he held her, her whispered tears burning against his throat._

_The weight of her stomach pressed against his own, their unborn child unaware of the turmoil that swirled and billowed and blew around them, the fact that soon, too soon, his body would be return to the dust from which it was made._

_Blood of my blood and bone of my bone…_

_The sky fading, burning against the starkly silhouetted tips of the stone circle._

_The world ending._

_The rise of English footsteps ringing outside the cottage walls, the desperate rise and fall of her breast and oh dear God… Sassenach… Where are ye?_

_A flash of red burning against a clash of steel, the tip of her airsaid falling into the cleft stone, falling back through time._

_‘Name him Brian,’ he had heard himself say, searching her face, committing each feature to memory, a desperate plea of a man who was set to die._

_‘Name him Brian,’ had been rasped through the murderous black swarm of corbies, the birds of war that had blotted the sky above the death trap of the moor._

_‘Name him Brian’, had been whispered through the bloody haze of battle; that small, white voice of hope pressing at the corners of his conscious amid the darkness._

_‘Name him Brian,’ had been murmured mockingly into his ear as he lay with his head in Murtagh’s lap, listening to the short, flat cracks across the moor that snuffed out another life. Another soul giving himself over to a cause doomed before it had even begun and oh God, why had he not heeded Claire when it had truly mattered?_

_Flames rise before his eyes, the lids burnt and cracked as he struggles to open them. The cool weight of a hand is held against his forehead, palm upward and drops away quickly, as if scalded. The other hands are gone and he feels strangely weightless, the searing pain in his leg faded to a dull ache._

_‘Drink mo chridhe, please,’ the weight of a cup being pressed against his mouth, cool liquid trickling against lips too cracked and broken to truly open._

_It hurts too much to swallow properly, the water dribbling wastefully into the stubble that caresses his chin._

_The warmth of a female voice wet with tears, the outline of a vaguely familiar face drawn with exhaustion slowly swimming through a dark and bloody haze._

_‘Claire?’ It is the only name that he can think of, the only name that truly mattered._

_‘No Jamie, it’s no Claire. It’s… It’s Jenny…’_

_The voice breaks off, the face fading in a searing flash of red, leaving him only with the weight of a hand pressed tightly within his own._

_‘Come to me my love,’ a distant voice seems to say, another voice that smiles through the silence, echoing from the edge of time._

_‘Come to me. It will all be over soon. You have done well. So very, very well.’_

_‘Stay with me Jamie!’ The fear in Jenny’s voice catches him but he cannot heed her wishes._

_He must go now if he is to go at all. He must finish what he had set out to do as the sun was setting over the stones at Craigh na Dun and yet her voice, the one voice that holds him here, holds him to life and Lallybroch, rings through him, echoes through his emptiness._

_He cannot leave her, cannot leave his sister and yet the other voice, the voice that he loves before all things is calling him, pulling him forward through the darkness, bringing him to a light that he does not understand._

_‘Stay with me!’_

_His body is heaved up at that, rising as if from a shipwreck, the weight of her arms clinging to him, pressing him closely to a chest that shudders with sobs. Jenny’s breaths rise and fall with her heartbeat and he clings to her like a sailor clinging to a scrap of driftwood; arms shaking with effort._

_‘I… I canna let you go mo ghraidh. Not now! Not yet!’_

_He can feel her hands in his hair, the weight of her palms supporting his head, the steady throb of her pulse; an ache of longing rising in his throat at the times that Claire had done the same for him, the weight of fine boned fingers soothing away all his hurts._

_But Claire was gone. Gone and thank God!_

_Thank God she had heeded him, desperate though their parting had been and now was safe, two hundred years and a lifetime away from him._

_‘Lord…’ The word falls in a hoarse whisper against his lips. ‘Lord, that she may be safe… She and the child.’_

_‘Aye,’ Jenny murmurs, hugging him closer to her breast, something cool and damp wetting his lips._

_‘Aye, she will be, Jamie. She and the child.’_

*

 

The fever breaks on the day a Redcoat patrol comes for Ian.

 

Dawn had unlocked the morning slowly, the lights rising above the moor in increments of pink and grey; the heather burning in a fire of tawny flecked purple.

 

The house unravelled itself above the priest hole, the running tramp of boots on the stone floor above, the bang of the pantry door that led up to the cave, the fretful wail of a bairn left unattended.

 

Jamie rises into this strange, new world, his body cold and damp and clear after the heat of the fever.

 

The priest hole seems wider than it has done in weeks, flecks of fire resting on the quilt, dispelling the shadows that have made the room their home.

 

Jenny’s shadow sits curled in the chair beside the bed, her hands pulled in her lap, her hair falling in a dark waterfall against a face that is pale and tight with exhaustion.

 

‘Mon nighean don’, he murmurs, his voice sounding not his own, reaching for her. She is two months gone with child, the bump just beginning to show, blooming against the fabric of her gown.

 

Her hardened fingers curl into his own and he squeezes back, reassuring her, reassuring himself that he is truly here, the prodigal son returned.

 

‘Jamie?’

 

Her voice is thick with sleep, her body slowly pulling itself out of oblivion.

 

‘Aye’, he says quietly, reaching for her, the warmth of the growing life beneath her gown flooding him, rooting him firmly in the life that he was sure he had lost.

 

She blinks, convinced that if she closes her eyes he will vanish from sight and be lost to her forever, her forefingers reaching to trace the line of his broken nose, the healed bone pressing white against the pale bronze of his skin.

 

 _She had never thought to ask him how he had come to break it,_ she thinks distractedly.

 

‘Truly? Jamie… I thought….’ There are tears in her voice which she swallows thickly, reaching up to brush them angrily away.

 

‘I ken what you thought, a _ghraidh,’_ he murmurs, accepting the glass of water that she hands him, the liquid cool against his barren tongue.

 

He stops short as the sound of a crash echoes from the kitchen above.

 

‘Christ,’ any colour left in her face blanches pale as the stamp of booted feet on the stair from the back pantry echoes through the floor.

 

It is more a prayer than an exclamation as an unintelligible stream of French and Gaelic curses echo from the kitchen. Jamie cannot stop his heart from clenching at the thought of Fergus and Rabbie McNab, both old enough to be treated as men now, facing the English alone.

 

‘I should go,’ the words come without thought, without hesitation, moving to untangle himself from the bed linen. _He must go, he must protect what is his own, his own by right!_

She stares at him, eyes glancing down to the bed and back up into his face, her eyes dry, all emotion locked away.

 

‘And stand on what?’ Her voice is sharp, sharper than she means it to be, but she cannot help it. She cannot, she _will not_ lose him again to an English bayonet so soon after finding him again.

 

‘Jamie, ye can barely stand on your leg, let alone…’

 

‘Aye, but I must!’ He is white to the lips, the agony of waiting plain in his face.

 

A shout echoes from the stairs, coming from Fergus, he thinks with the sound of retreating footsteps as he reaches to grip her hand, unable to stop his fingers from shaking.

 

‘If ye must, ye must. You are Laird after all, are ye no?’ There is a hint of mockery in Jenny’s voice that does little to disguise her worry as she helps him stand.

 

A judder of pain spasms up his leg as his body aligns itself in a vertical positon and he staggers for a moment, willing the limb to remain upright, clinging to her shoulder.

 

‘On your head be it, brother’, Jenny mutters through the agony, eyes narrowed to slits as he wills the world to stop spinning, wills the rising metallic sting of nausea to pass.

 

He feels the coarse warmth of a rough wool blanket being thrown over his shoulders, the weight of her arm miraculously managing to hold him upright. It was hardly the attire for the Laird of Broch Tuarach he thinks as his hand is transferred to the bedframe to allow Jenny to tuck the blanket in a haphazard version of a plaid and then pull her own hair up.

 

‘Ye’ll do,’ she mutters finally, exasperation tugging at every syllable, all her unspoken fears all too clear in a face pale with exhaustion and worry.

_If they are to face Butcher Cumberland’s men, they will face them with the dignity that Brian and Ellen MacKenzie Fraser taught them._

 

The walk to the kitchen feels like an eternity.

 

Jenny is trembling beside him as they move slowly through the back pantry, silent bolts of agony searing his still healing leg with every step, the palm of her hand slick with sweat. It is the only visible sign of weakness and he marvels at how outwardly calm she is; her chin up, her mouth set in an expression that would make most men lose their bowels.

 

The kitchen seems to be filled with a platoon of red coat soldiers when they enter, their scarlet coats blinding against the soft grey sky outside.

 

‘Ma!’ Maggie Ellen and Katherine Mary run to Jenny; burying themselves within the folds of her gown, watched in silence by the English platoon. He can just make out Murtagh half hidden in the shadows, dark eyes alive with concern. Fergus is backed towards the door, his right arm bound up in a sling and Ian with him, his hands firmly gripping the shoulders of Young Jamie, their faces doing little to conceal the fear so evident in their eyes.

 

The hand that is not resting on Jenny’s arm involuntarily curls itself to a fist.

 

_How many of this platoon’s companions had he killed, had killed his own men at Culloden? Falkirk? Prestonpans? How many more would die needlessly, wastefully before they came to their senses?_

‘Mrs Murray?’ A captain steps forward, his mouth grim, the grey-blue eyes unreadable beneath the cocked hat. ‘Lady of Broch Tuarach?’

 

Jenny straightens to her full height, the top of her head reaching his breastbone. Her dark eyes flash at the captain, taking in the coarse, black stubble of a moustache, the scar of a healed sabre cut jagging down one cheek.

 

‘I am. And what in flaming hell are ye doing in my house?!’ Her eyes dart to Ian and then back to the captain, fingers trembling on Jamie’s arm as she glares at the intruder.

 

‘We… ah…’ The captain clears his throat brusquely and moves aside to show the scrubbed kitchen table.

 

Jamie winces in a breath that has nothing to do with his leg as he sees what the captain is referring to. Beside him, Jenny staggers, the weight of her daughters and the unborn child pressed against her.

 

It is his fathers’ broadsword.

 

His broadsword.

 

The blade that had followed him to France, had fought with him through the doomed bloodbath that had been the Rising.

 

‘My men found this on our recent search of your property,’ the captain was saying, but Jamie struggles to hear him; understanding dawning in silent horror.

 

_How and why in flaming hell was the blade still here?_

‘You know, I am sure, what the punishment for holding weapons in the Highlands is?’ The captain’s voice is icy calm as he reaches to test the sword, balancing its weight against the palm of his sword hand, dark eyes fathomless pits of meaning.

 

Jenny swallows wordlessly.

 

Jamie grits his teeth and waits.

 

‘You know of course, that any weapon, _any_ weapon found among this… This heathen landscape,’ he breaks off with a silent noise of distaste and out of the corner of his eye, Jamie sees Fergus and his nephew struggling to reach him, faces dark with fury.

 

‘Will result in the death, by hanging or pistol, of the owner of the blade.’ He finishes this dispassionately, eyes flickering over the assembled crowd and then resting on Jamie.

 

He meets the gaze head on, lifting his chin.

 

_He has been broken by an English dragoon captain once before and he does not mean to be so again._

‘You are the Laird of Broch Tuarach, I take it?’ The dark eyes flicker over Jamie’s height, the crop of auburn curls catching in the weak shafts of sunlight, the makeshift plaid, the set jaw, the bare feet.

 

‘I am’, he says, patiently; not daring to look at his sister or Ian.

 

_If he is marked to die, then at least he will meet his fate with a clear conscious._

‘No!’ The shout comes from the shadows and to his horror, he sees Ian pushing forward, forcing his way past Murtagh, hazel eyes wild with fear.

 

‘No!’ he says again, voice filled with deadly fury, eyes fixed on the expectant captain.

 

‘The Lairdship and the blade belong to me, sir.’ He does not look at Jamie.

 

‘A Deed of Sasine was approved on the day that the _Prince Tearlach_ landed, passing the estate to me in the event of the present Laird’s death. I canna fight,’ he says quickly, gesturing to his wooden leg and the captain nods, ‘but I was able to send men whilst the Laird was in the field and…’ He breaks off and Jamie understands in a rush of desperate horror.

 

‘ _Ye don’t need to do this Ian! Think! Think what ye’re saying man! Mo ghraidh! Think!’_

‘The blade belongs to me,’ he says with simple finality, finally looking around at Jenny. ‘Do with me what you will.’

 

_‘I am sorry, mon nighean don. So verra, verra sorry.  Forgive me. Remember me.’_

 

Jamie feels Jenny’s body stiffen beneath his fingers, eyes boring into the captain’s and his grip on his sister’s arm tightens, hardly daring to breathe.

 

There is only one choice now, one choice that is not Ian’s to make. The choice belongs to the Captain and Jamie cannot bear it.

 

Cannot bear the fact that he is powerless, he is Laird of Broch Tuarach and yet here he stands, unable to protect his own.

 

‘Take him,’ the captain’s voice is dispassionate, gesturing to his men who move as one to Ian. A whip of rope is produced from one of their coats and binds Ian’s hands behind his back. Jamie sets his jaw, his heart aching for the man whom he calls a brother.

 

‘ _I will find you’,_ he thinks; fixing his eyes on Ian’s back. ‘ _Whether it is in this life or the hereafter, mo ghraidh. I will find you.’_

 

‘No! You… You can’t! You putain de bâtard ! You…’ Fergus’s shout rings suddenly through the silence, the words choked with angry, fearful sobs. The wiry body struggles through the crowd, dark eyes blazing until his insults are cut off into wordless thrashes as Murtagh grabs him, holding him close.

 

‘Enough lad’, Jamie hears his godfather mutter fiercely, forcing the boy to remain still. ‘Enough. Ye canna do anything now, ye hear? Nothing.’ The dark eyes that Jamie knows and loves so well are slits of emotion; the broad face deathly pale.

 

Under the weight of his hand, he can feel Jenny trembling, hear the soft whimpers of his nieces pressing into the fabric of her gown.

 

‘Say your farewells,’ the captain tells Ian flatly, pale eyes flickering over the assembled crowd. His right hand reaches wordlessly for his pistol as his left shoves Ian to meet Jenny.

 

The embrace is wordless, the movements hard and desperate, reminding him of the final time he had taken Claire before sending her back through the stones, a painful ache of longing for them both rising in his throat.

 

‘I will not forget ye, mon nighean don’, he hears Ian whisper into Jenny’s hair, the hazel eyes committing every feature to memory, their gripped hands shaking as she lets him past to Jamie.

 

‘Mo ghraidh,’ Ian says simply, kneeling to him; bound palms held up, the gulf of emotion stretching between them seeming to last a lifetime. Jamie nods, the words that he desperately wants to say feeling caught and blocked in his throat as he moves away from his sister reaching to take Ian’s hands between his own. They are steady as he traces the worn, calloused skin, the strength of the bones running drawn lean and tight beneath his bonds. The hazel eyes that meet his are clear and dry, only a flicker of emotion that goes before he truly registers it betraying his fear.

 

‘I swear by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the holy iron that I hold, to give ye my fealty and pledge ye my loyalty’, the words come without thought, words that were as old as time itself. Jamie swallows, watching the waiting captain survey the scene in silence. In the shadows, he sees Murtagh cross himself, Fergus’s eyes grow wide with understanding, feels Jenny turn wordlessly into his shoulder.

 

Pulling himself upright, Ian leans into him, the thud of their joined heartbeats twinned in the agony of parting and places a small, full kiss against his mouth. Turning to the captain, he nods, accepting the tug on his bonds without struggle.

 

‘I am ready.’

 

_Je suis prest._

 

The words carry with them a horrendous sense of finality.

‘Wait!’ The word bursts from his lips before he has time to think, but it is ignored. The captain’s back is turned and Ian is being pushed towards the door.

 

The platoon moves out, the door swinging wide behind them.

 

Ignoring his leg, Jamie moves to follow, gritting his teeth at the shudders of agony that come with every step.

 

Breathless, he leans against the kitchen doorframe looking out onto the moor. Ian stands to attention, eyes fixed on the squadron of soldiers before him, bayonets ready. The ground seems to hold its’ breath, the tussock grass trembling in anticipation.

 

A volley of short, flat cracks echoing hard against the sudden quiet.

 

Jenny’s sobbing weight buried in his chest, his arms reaching to hold her, the thud of their hearts desperate in the silence.

 

His eyes find the silhouette of a dragoon, gun arm outstretched, the shadow looming black against the blazing purple of the moorland, the deep blue of the hills behind.

 

‘God be with ye, mo ghraidh’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Offers round a box of tissues*
> 
> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, questions and constructive criticism etc are like chocolate to my brain.
> 
> If you are sad right now, please know that I have cried many, many times whilst writing this chapter and tying off ends. 
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> P.S: I highly recommend listening to the track 'Stoick's Ship' from How To Train Your Dragon 2 and also 'Destiny on Culloden Moor' from the Outlander Season 2 soundtrack whilst reading this, it really puts everything into perspective and adds, I think, a new sense of emotion to the proceedings.


	7. Claire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reeling from the events of Culloden and her return to 1948, Claire tries to come to terms with what she has lost and the memories of the men whom she has loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this so far! Your feedback is utterly invaluable and I can't thank any of you enough for sticking with me! I am also sorry that this has taken a while to materialise, I started my final semester of my undergrad degree this week and that mixed with other things mean that I haven't really had time to sit down and give this the time it deserves.
> 
> Also, if a lot of the dialogue and description seem familiar, i.e. Gabaldon-esque, it is because I've lifted quite a lot from the end of Dragonfly in Amber and the 'modern' chapters in Voyager, including Hugh Munroe's love poem.

Claire 

May 1948

The small silver circle glows in her palm, the heat from her skin stubbornly refusing to leave the band that she has never thought to take off.

 

She had never thought the action could be possible until Frank’s hands had pressed against her own; the lines and bones of his fingers large and stark in the dappled May light that filtered through the birch trees’ leaves outside her hospital window. The hospital felt like another life, one that she had forgone entirely when she had stepped through the stones at Craigh na Dune and now was returning to slowly, like a sailor being pulled up from the icy depths of some dark ocean.

 

‘Claire? Claire, please look at me,’ but the weight of the hands become Jamie’s hands, the broken hand that had lain still and bloody between her palms; the taut skin feeling so impossibly fragile within the wooden splint. The hand that had been the key to an object more fragile than the speckled shell of a bird’s egg. An object that glowed and flickered and spat, its’ embers bursting furiously against the darkness that had engulfed her husband after Wentworth.

 

‘Claire?’

 

There is concern in Frank’s voice, sincere concern that digs deep into her heart, making it ache with longing.

 

_How she wishes she could accept his offer!_

_How she wishes she could forget!_

 

But to accept would mean to forget and she cannot do that. She had promised Jamie that she would not forget.

_She could not forget the weight of him pressed against her, the ache of longing caught within the slanted Fraser eyes as they searched her face, committing each feature to memory._

_‘You are mine, mon nighean don,’ he had whispered into her hair, his voice rough with the ache of parting, the bitter knowledge of the battle that was to come._

_She would not forget the way he had drawn her to him, leaning with her back towards him as they watched the natural light fade over the valley, his chin resting comfortingly on her shoulder. Speckles of watch fires had begun to spring up in the gathering gloom, glowing dots in the far distance, billowed by the grieving cry of the wind as it rippled through her ears, a lament of lives lost and lives not yet born._

_She would not forget Jamie’s profile, the planes of his face stark in silhouette against the fading, blazing sky, coming to her quietly with a last, desperate request._

_‘Claire,’ the name said slow and savoured against his lips in a way that makes her want to weep, if she had the strength for tears. ‘Tomorrow I will die. This child… is all that will be left of me. Ever. I ask ye, Claire, I beg you, see it safe.’_

_And he had pulled her back into the cottage’s dappled light with the crooked smile that she knows so well, crinkling in eyes dark with memory. She had sought him too, her hands shaking as they explored the secret places of his body, the sweat in the hollow of his throat bitter to her tongue, the sweetness of his wide, full mouth that left a lingering scent of dried apple and a tang of juniper berries on her lips._

_They had lain there with his hands cupping the swell of her stomach, listening to the rush of the wind and the trickle of rain pattering against the eaves. Lain in the warmth and comfort of their bodies, the link that held her to him growing ever more fragile as it ran through plaid and cloak and skin. And she had watched for the bloom of night into day, waiting with baited breath for dawn to unlock the morning and prayed, selfishly perhaps, she thinks now, that it would never come._

_And she remembers the weight of his tongue against the base of her thumb, teeth sinking into the flesh in a desperate, lovesick bite. The weight of the knife in her hand, the brawny flesh of his sword hand giving way in a bubble of blood, marking him._

_‘Blood of my Blood…’_

_The words were thick in her throat, the memory of the first time she had said them, stumbling over the Gaelic, unsure of what they meant and where they would take her, swimming before her eyes._

_‘… and Bone of my Bone…’_

_The vow said with a crooked smile, a watermark against his mouth, imprinted in her mind forever._

The smile that now flickered against the rising cheekbones of the child still sleeping in the dark safety of her womb; the imagined Viking cheekbones just visible beneath the shell of baby fat that masked the face from view.

 

The wiry, calloused hands reach to grip her own; the skin marked by the grip of pens, the leak of ink imprinted forever against fine, taut bones. Scholars hands, she thinks abstractedly. Dark, grey eyes blink in incomprehension at the ring and then back at her and she wishes that she could explain without hurting him further.

 

Frank had the look of his ancestors, the shadows of their actions falling against the sharp, clean features in the hospital strip lights. But even so, his face lacked the strangeness that held the faces of Jack and Alex to the past. Lacked the spirituality, even in illness that had clung to Alex’s face in the dim light of the boarding house, dying in Mary Hawkin’s arms. It lacked Jack’s cruel, dark arrogance that had leered out of Jamie’s dreams for so long and for that at least she was grateful.  

 

‘What is this?’ His fingers feel unnaturally cold as he reaches to take the ring into the light to examine it closer, but she snatches it back. She is unable, unwilling it seems to let the physical reminder of that dreadful April day, two hundred years and a lifetime ago now, go so casually.

 

Smudges of exhaustion cling to the soft skin around Frank’s eyelids, the weight of the night drive from Oxford to Inverness all too clear.

 

‘Claire?’ He reaches to take her hand, the hand marked with the small slowly whitening scar of Jamie’s cut against the soft pit of her palm.

 

‘My wedding ring,’ the words are rough to her tongue, her voice sounding loud and obnoxious in the stillness.

 

He frowns at her, but says nothing.

 

‘And… I’m pregnant.’

 

It seemed important that he knows this now, but once she says them, the words that she has harboured for so long, feel strangely insufficient.

 

He nods, waiting for her to elaborate, but she feels that she cannot.

 

‘I know,’ he says at last, the grip on her hand tightening, the unspoken question of ‘how’ threaded like a hangman’s noose between them.

 

‘The ring?’

 

It still lies in her palm, clutched between fingers that feel icy cold, the dread of understanding that she must tell him before she loses her nerve crashing over her.

 

He has a right to know the truth and yet that truth, the warmth and weight of Jamie’s hands clasped over her own, the phantom sting of blood from his uncle’s dirk blooming over her wrist, is too much to bear.

 

‘But I don’t understand it Claire,’ he says at last, brows knitted above sharp grey eyes.

 

Again, the unspoken questions of ‘how’ and ‘why’ hang between them and she feels that she cannot answer any of them, cannot tell him that her marriage to James Fraser had been for her own protection. That the simple ring, fashioned out of a key to Lallybroch, was a symbol of her place within the Highlands, of her protection from Black Jack Randall.

 

‘I fell in love’, she says quietly, finally, knowing that it would be the last thing that he would expect.

 

‘What do you mean?’

 

His voice is suddenly sharp, ringing against the stillness of the room.

 

The doctor checking her vitals looks up and quickly away, his face a mask of blank professionalism, cool fingers tapping for her pulse.

 

She feels trapped between the two men, neither of whom will truly understand what she is trying to tell them.

 

‘Where have you been Claire?’ Frank stands suddenly, his face looking so much like Jack’s that she supresses a shudder at the thought of the ghost who had haunted her dreams for so long reappearing.

 

 _Jack Randall is dead,_ a voice at the back of her mind says firmly, but still she cannot stem the prickle of unease from creeping into her heart at the memory.

 

‘Do you remember that when I last saw you, I was going up to the stone circle on Craigh na Dun?’

 

‘Yes?’ his interest is piqued now; his face caught somewhere between anger and suspicion.

 

She swallows, licking suddenly dry lips and thinks of Jamie. Thinks of the panic that had engulfed her when she had found herself still in the stone circle, but in a reality so far from her own, that it could be another planet. It had been another planet; one that haunted her dreams with the echoes of Gaelic shouting, Jamie’s musky scent pressed against her chest and the body of Dougal Mackenzie lying in a pool of his own blood in the attic at Culloden House.

 

‘Well,’ her voice does not sound like her own. ‘The fact is that I walked through a cleft stone in that circle and ended up in 1743.’

 

_1743._

 

_Three years, two hundred and five years ago, and a lifetime away now. So much had changed since she had first heard the rising, roaring buzz of the stones, pulling her close, forcing her back and woken to the sound of bayonets cracking in the silence._

‘Don’t be facetious Claire!’ The words are bitten through his teeth and are so absurd that a bubble of laughter blooms in her throat, breaking free before she can stop it.

 

‘I’m not!’ She tries to prise herself out of his grip, but he holds on.

 

‘I walked through a stone and ended up two hundred years ago! I met your bloody ancestor, Jack Randall there!’

 

She had promised herself that she would not speak of Black Jack unless entirely necessary, but the name comes before she stops to think.

 

He blinks, caught suddenly off guard.

 

‘Who?’

 

‘Black Jack Randall! Your ancestor; that bloody, filthy pervert who tried to kill me!’ Her voice is higher, louder than she expected it to be, the weight of his palms against her neck, the bite of his dagger at her throat, suddenly unbearable.

 

From the corridor, she hears the light tap of nurses’ shoes, female voices high and hurried, the flash of a camera despite the promise that the press would be kept at bay; the acceleration of a car rumbling past the window.

 

‘I had to marry Jamie Fraser because… Because I had to get away from Randall,’ the words are all tumbled together and she is sure that they make no sense to him.

 

‘I couldn’t help it Frank, I loved him. Loved him deeply and I would have stayed with him, I tried to stay with him, but with Culloden and the baby…’

 

A flicker of joy passes through his features, lighting up the dark eyes that had for a moment been dark with the malice that had filled the same eyes on a different face.

 

‘The baby’, he prompts, quieter now.

 

‘He sent me back because of Culloden and the baby and-’she breaks off, the words caught in her throat, choking her. She cannot tell him more and yet she must, she has an obligation to tell him and he… Despite her better judgement, she realises that he has a right to know, even if the baby; the precious ball of life, the one thing that makes sense to her, is not his.

 

A nurse with grey eyes and mouse coloured hair pulled tightly under her cap pushes into the room, grey eyes full of questions that she does not have the strength to answer now. A hypodermic needle glints against the starkness of her uniform and the prospect of oblivion, of not having to explain herself feels suddenly inviting.

 

 The weight of her exhaustion seems to pull at her, as if she has run for miles and only now has been given leave to stop. It drags her down, but she must fight it, she must tell him as much as she can.

 

‘Frank,’ she reaches for him, wanting to hold him, wanting to convince herself that he is real, that the man whom she had called her husband, is real and not a figment of her imagination.

 

He nods, although she is not sure if he truly understands, the warmth of his hands reaching for her; gripping cold fingers beneath his own. His expression is different, the sudden burst of anger ebbing as quickly as it had come; leaving the handsome, symmetrical features blank, bafflement that he could not express haunting his gaze.

 

She can feel tears damming up behind her eyes, wells of emotion for the life she has lost, for the life she has returned to but does not know if she can lead.

 

Tears for Jamie, for the body that she had known in such intimacy now dust on Culloden Moor, dying for a cause that had been doomed before it had even begun, for the child in her womb and for Frank. Frank who was caught up in the middle of this, without knowing why or how.

 

He sits down by the bed, eyes flickering over the vase of hyacinths in a blue, Delft patterned vase on the bedside table, the hairbrush, the ring still caught between his thumb and forefinger, glinting in the light.

 

For a desperate moment, she wants to snatch it off him, but finds that she cannot.

 

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he says gently, the words echoes of her reassurances to Jamie on the first night in Paris, reaching for her hand again although she tries to pull it away.

 

_‘I’m right here and I’m not going away.’_

‘This… This Jamie and the ring. What does it mean?’

 

A deep, shuddering breath echoes through her as she accepts the wide silver band in the Highland interlace pattern, cradling it in her left hand which still wore Frank’s gold wedding band.

 

The metal is still warm, the heat from the dual hands clinging to the metal as she twists it towards the light, not looking at him. The ring is light, but after three years of wear, it has left a groove in her flesh as she twists it down into place and then back over the knuckle joint.

 

Her breath catches in her throat as she tilts it towards the light.

 

‘There are words in it’. She cannot look at Frank, her voice suddenly caught and husky with realisation. ‘I never realised that he’d… Oh dear God…’

 

His hand tightens against her own at the exclamation, but she ignores it, asking her a question that she does not catch.

 

‘ _Da mia basia mille..’_ The words seem to come from a long way off, her voice not sounding like her own, but taking on the form of Jamie’s, tongue warm and rich as it wraps itself around the Gaelic cadences.  

 

The weight of the understanding is too much, far too much and yet she must hold it for as long as she can, or let it destroy her entirely.

 

‘It’s Catullus. A bit of a love poem given to me as… As a wedding present, wrapped around a piece of amber with a dragonfly inside.’

 

With a sudden pang of longing, she remembers the cry of the meadowlarks on the moor, the rush of the wind, the soft give of the grass mixed with peat, the weight of Jamie’s body pressed against her as they sat watching the sky wrapped in his Mackenzie plaid.

 

She swallows, her voice rising through the translation, the words moving slowly into steadiness.

 

‘ _Then let amorous kisses dwell,_

_On our lips begin and tell,_

_A Thousand and a Hundred score,_

_A Hundred, and a thousand more.’_

Her hands are trembling when she finishes and it takes a moment before she finds the strength to look at Frank and takes a small, ragged breath to try and steady herself.

 

_Poor man, he should know a little, at least!_

‘James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser,’ the words are spoken with a formality that he had introduced himself at their wedding. The thought of that spring day, of the dappled light streaming through the church’s open door, of Ned Gowan and Dougal, of Jamie standing proud and hesitant in his borrowed Fraser tartan, of all the faces she had known and loved, now lost to the mists of history, brings another tear to her eye and she blinks it away hurriedly.

 

‘He was a Highlander,’ she says quietly and she feels Frank’s hands stiffen.

 

‘He was k-killed at Culloden… He wanted to die…’  Her voice breaks at the mention of the battle, her heart cracking with a small, clean sound. She knows that the tears are not nearly enough to express the extent of the pain, but they are the only response her body, full of exhausted emotion, can think of.

 

The grief contracts her, doubling her over as if she has been a dealt a blow to the stomach. Her hand slips from Frank’s grip, wrapping itself instinctively around the tiny, unborn life that held her to Jamie Fraser.

 

‘Claire… I… I’m…’

 

His apologies are overtaken by the doctor’s voice; the soft, pull of the North- East accent lilting in her ears.

 

‘… It would be best to not trouble your wife right now…’

 

‘The shock… Yes, yes, quite…’

 

The quick, urgent sound of footsteps being ushered to the door become fainter as her sobs subside, leaving nothing but a hollow sense of emptiness that she cannot explain. An exchange of soft voices; the firm weight of a cool hand reaching for her wrist.

 

‘Mrs Randall?’

 

A light, almost Irish brogue, a hint of cologne, cool fingers reaching for her ulnar artery and the prospect of oblivion.

 

_Mrs Fraser, wife to James Fraser! Lady of Broch Tuarach!_

The words burst against her brain, words that she desperately wants to scream aloud, but knows that it is impossible.

 

No one would believe her if she did.

 

She has lost the two things that have made her whole and the life that holds one of them is not yet born, not yet able to give her the comfort that she craves.

 

When it comes, the sting of the hypodermic needle does not trouble her.

 

With the needle comes darkness, blessed darkness that she has longed for such a long time and she falls at last into a silent, dreamless sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> P.S A song that I'd highly recommend listening to whilst reading the flashback scene is 'Moch Sa Mhadainn' from the Outlander Season 2 OST, which appears in the credits of episode 9 'Je Suis Prest.'


	8. Epilogue I: 1746

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ian Fraser Murray is buried in the Lallybroch graveyard on a day when the sky seems to be an endless stream of grey and Jamie comes to terms with the weight of loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this! Your feedback is utterly invaluable and I can't thank any of you enough for sticking with me and this.
> 
> P.S The epilogue is going to be split into two parts, one for Jamie in 1746 and one for Claire in 1960's Boston, so that I can give enough time for each of them and also because I don't want to give up this story just yet.

Epilogue

 Part 1: 1746

Ian Fraser Murray is buried in the Lallybroch graveyard on a day when the sky seems to be an endless stream of grey. The house is hushed, the sombre quiet of the occasion enveloping the rooms as Jamie makes his way to the parlour, the steady thump of his stick disturbing trails of dust against the bare wooden floorboards

 

He had come down the back stairs, treading carefully across the flagstones of the pantry, listening to the soft movements of the house as it unravelled itself around him. The soft rise and fall of the kitchen maid’s voices coupled with a momentary chide from Jenny filters from the kitchen, a shadow of her former bite, making his heart ache with bitterness.

 

_‘I would have done it, a nighean don. Ye know I would. I would have done it a thousand times over if I could save ye this heartache!’_

The passage to the parlour is full of shadows, weak shafts of sunlight casting a dusty glow over the portraits of his parents, of Jenny, of…

 

He stops before Ian’s portrait and considers it, the ache for the man who had been his brother since Willie’s death, a sudden throb in his chest. Considers the soft rise of Ian’s brows, the piercing hazel eyes that he could see so clearly marked on Kitty and Maggie’s faces, looking now from the face of a ghost. The girls’ eyes were softer than their fathers, but still could hold the flash of mischief that he remembers so clearly from their adolescence, can see the faintest glimmer of laughter from the swipe of oil that captures the slight twist to his brother-in-law’s mouth.

 

Sudden smarts of salt dam up behind his eyes and he blinks, his free hand reaching to swipe them away; a pained, watery smile quirking at his lips.

 

‘Why am I like this, Ian? Christ, ye wouldnae want me to be sad, but can I grieve for ye? Can ye grant me that?’ The words come without thought, but as he says them he feels the fist that has clutched at his chest since he stood looking out over the moor, Jenny’s sobbing weight collapsed against his chest, lighten slightly.

 

He moves on, eyes flickering through the dusty darkness to the paintings of his parents. Ellen with the grey Mackenzie eyes, softer than either of her brothers, the mane of copper hair shot through with lights of russet, copper and auburn tangled and dusky in the dark. Her eyes sat as Jenny’s did, wide with their own self-worth, her mouth quirking with an approving twist. He sees the glimmer of the pearls with their delicate gold roundels that he had given to Claire on their wedding night, their lustre cool in his palm as his fingers curled through her hair to fiddle with the clasp.

 

‘ _Would ye have done the same Maithair?’,_ he thinks suddenly, a desperate cry to the mother who had died in childbirth when he was twelve and Jenny ten. ‘ _Would ye have let him go?’_

 

He cannot bring himself to look at the portrait of Brian Fraser, put presses on towards the parlour, searching for Willie, the one member who would lay his troubled heart at peace.

 

The parlour is filled with the silent, older children. Young Jamie looks up at him with red rimmed eyes, his face that looked so much like Ian’s. Maggie and Kitty are crowded on the window seat, looking starched and sore in their Sunday best. Only Fergus approaches him; the smile that he knows and loves so well not quite reaching his eyes.

 

‘Milord?’

 

He nods quietly, accepting the French boy’s hand as it squeezes it in reassurance, the thin strong fingers quivering slightly in understanding. The boy’s right arm is still bound in a sling, but he shrugs when Jamie glances at it.

 

‘It does not hurt milord. Madame was most generous with the whiskey.’ He grimaces ruefully and Jamie cannot help a small, pained smile from quirking at his lips, knowing how Fergus refuses to be turned to the taste of whiskey. There is nothing he can say, nothing that can express the gratitude that he feels towards the boy; the ache of remorse lodged in his throat without giving way to the tears damming behind his eyes. There is an old look in the hooded eyes as the boy looks up at him, an old, considered look that had graced the face of many a battle-scarred soldier dark against his gaze.

 

‘You were right, I think,’ he says at last, his grasp falling from Jamie’s grip as they turn towards Jenny’s bookshelf; the dark wood bearing gaping Red Coat wounds. His fingers run gently over the wood, falling into the splintered grain, wishing for vengeance.

 

Beside him, Fergus assesses the painting of himself, aged two, with Willie and Bran, the huge brindled deerhound. In the sunlit shadows, he sees for a sudden moment the man that his ward will no doubt become; the beaked nose above the mobile mouth rising above high, hardening bones giving the promise of outright handsomeness when he came of age.

 

‘Your brother, _milord?_ ’’ Fergus’s voice seems to come from a place lost in the mists of memory.

 

‘Aye,’ he hears his tongue move in reply, the word not feeling his own.

 

‘ _Aye’,_ he thinks, his mind not able to give voice to his thoughts.

 

‘ _Aye and if you hadna died’_ , he says silently to the portrait, feeling the slanted Fraser eyes, more grey than blue, bore once more into his soul, _‘would you ha’ done it differently? If you were laird? Would ye have let a good man walk to his grave? A ruraidh, what would ye have done? What could I do?’_

 

His stock feels hot and heavy, caught against the sob pressed in his throat. The sting of sudden tears burn against the corners of his eyelid and he blinks them back, blinking away the ghosts, reaching with his free hand to tug away at the wad of linen, craving air.

The family Bible lies open on the shelf, bound in battered morocco leather. The weight of the pages are a strange source of comfort to him as he leans his stick against the wood and carefully lets the book fall open, the faint smells of pressed camomile, lavender and ink enveloping his senses.

 

The book falls open falls open to the title page, recording the births, marriages and deaths of the MacKenzie-Frasers. It begins with those of his parents; their names written in his mother’s firm round hand, the ink now faded brown with age. He cannot help but smile as his eyes find the pointed notation underneath, written in by his father, tracing the worn marks of the pen with a trailing finger.

 

_Marrit for love._

_Like him perhaps? Had he married Claire for love? Or had he simply been performing a duty to his uncle to protect her from the wrath of Black Jack Randall? He had grown to love her; love her, revere her, honour her above all things and now…_

‘Pray for us brother,’ he says aloud, crossing himself, his voice sounding strange after the darkness of his thoughts. Fergus nods silently and copies the action with a sombre smile; his eyes lingering on the portrait as Jamie tucks the bible under his arm and motions for the children to follow.

 

From the window, he hears a buzzard’s soft keen as it searches the heather, Maggie Ellen’s soft sobs, the drum of Fergus’s fingers lingering against the battered bookshelf.

 

****

 

The walk to the Lallybroch graveyard takes the mourning party up a winding sheep track; the earth compact under the drum of generations of cloven hooves. Ian’s body is shouldered between Murtagh and Hugh Kirby; Geoff Murray and Joe Fraser walking behind them to mind the burden, shovels shouldered, their bonnets clutched in cold hands. A length of the ragged Murray plaid, musty from a prolonged stay in the priest hole acts as a shroud, the dark red and blue of the warp and weft faded to rust against the moss of the green sett.

 

Jamie walks ahead, breathing in the pungent sweetness of the moor, the slap of the wind cool against his cheek. A peewit cries over the hill, the cotton grass billowing in small, white clouds at his feet amid the blazing purple of the heather. _It would soon be time for the moor to be set ablaze,_ he thinks; the memories of the fires at Culloden rising behind his eyes, the ghostly stench of roasting meat aching in his mind. Icy sweat prickles at his palms as he remembers the blackened smoke darkening the death trap of the moor, ripe with the stench of burnt meat. 

 

_But not yet. Not yet, thank God._

_He would approach those ghosts, give penitence to those who needed it when the time came, but not before._

_For he had seen the blaze of anger in Jenny’s eyes as she took the measure of the Red Coat captain, so different from the helpless child who had been dragged into the kailyard by Black Jack Randall, felt its flames kindle in his own heart, singeing his soul into helplessness in the shocked quiet of the kitchen. Felt his sister’s sobbing weight collapse against him, the shadow of the dragoon against the moor branded behind his eyes like the throbbing sting of Jack Randall’s mark._

‘ _I swear by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the holy iron that I hold, to give ye my fealty and pledge ye my loyalty’._

Such simple words! Such simple words that had unlocked the chamber in his heart that he had thought had been slammed shut with Culloden and set it weeping with anger.

 

His feet stop walking of their own accord, letting the sudden waterfall of silent rage cascade over him, his body trembling, teeth ground together in bitterly remembered helplessness.

 

Gooseflesh erupts against the cool weave of his shirt, his skin shivering as if touched by a ghost, Ian’s voice a husky, breath filled memory against his ear.

 

‘ _And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’_

Matthew 28:20.

 

_Aye brother._

_I ken it well._

The breath comes slowly, deeply, struggling to be forced free.

 

_I am with you._

‘Jamie? Jamie mo chiride, are ye well?’ He doesn’t hear Jenny come up behind him, nor does he feel the weight of her arm slip into his until thin fingers rub against his palm, curling themselves into his own.

 

He looks down at her; the lines of her face sharp with grief, the grey-blue Mackenzie eyes inherited from their Mother unending pools of emotion.

 

She is little more than skin and bone now, the flesh rising around the bulge of her pregnant belly, the unborn life utterly oblivious to the pain that the bearer felt.

 

Part of him wants to chide her for it, for giving what little the kailyard offered and what game Rabbie and Murtagh could snare, to the children, but knows that it is pointless. Claire had done the same during the long march north to Culloden, pushing the meagre army rations that they had been billeted with, towards him. Her hands had been pressed in her lap in an image of firm denial, he remembers, as he had watched the slow thickening of her pregnant stomach with growing despair.

 

She comes to him wordlessly, pressing her head into the crook of his shoulder. The embrace is awkward with the baby on the way; a ball of life that was alive beneath the fabric of her gown; impatient kicks and thrusts making the feelings of her womb’s inhabitant all too clear as he drinks in the complexities of her scent. Notes of candlewax and cinnamon buried under her cheeks, tallow soap and wool, the soft slap of the wind cooling against her skin, the faint hints of milk catching at her breast.

 

‘Dinna fash, mo ghraidh,’ he whispers into her hair, the words choked in the quiet.

 

Her hair is caught with the wind; ink black tendrils, so very like their fathers’ framing her face, heightening the sharpness that hunger brought to her cheeks. He can just make out a few silver strands standing stark against the ebony, the sight sending another juddering pang to his chest.

 

_Jenny… Oh mo leannan… I’m sorry… But I’ll be here, a bheanachd… I promise ye… I’ll be here for as long as I can…_

A silent moue catches at her lips in reply. A sound that encompasses Ian’s death, their father’s blade lying bare on the kitchen table, Fergus’s unconscious body cradled in Mrs Kirby’s arms, the dearth of food, his homecoming to Lallybroch blurred and broken with fever and worry that the Laird was now a known Jacobite traitor.

 

‘It wasnae your fault Jamie,’ she says at last, the words caught with tears, pulling herself out of the embrace to watch his godfather and Hugh slowly wind their way to meet them.

 

The Murray children follow in a ragged line behind them, closely watched by Fergus, Rabbie and Mrs Coker. Lallybroch rears behind them, the house a jagged structure of granite lines against rolling blue shadowed hills.

 

_What would his father, whose ancestors blood was in the very stone of the place, think of him now, burying his brother-in-law dead at the hand of a Red Coat bayonet?_

 

Sensing his disquiet, Jenny presses closer to him, her hand reaching down to grip his own; her grip almost painful in its’ strength.

 

‘Was I right, Jenny?’

 

The question comes before he thinks it through and is lost before he truly understands its’ meaning.

 

She looks up at him, eyes over-bright; her lips pressed together in a firm line that told him that she was trying to hold back tears.

 

‘Ian knew would he was doing, Jamie,’ she says firmly; the ghosts of their last embrace rearing between them, reaching up to brush away at the tears smarting at the corners of her eyelids.

 

‘He knew what it meant’, she says finally, cradling her belly, wrinkling her nose at the unborn child desperately wanting out of its’ sanctuary.

 

He nods, reaching over to take her hand and brushes his lips against her knuckles.

 

_I will be here mo leannan, I promise you._

_As he had been when Claire lost her child?_ The thought is a spike of bitter memory of the Bois de Bologne. A memory of his sword arm snaking down to meet Randall’s throat, the moment of bloody vengeance shattered by her heart wrenching scream from the trees.

 

‘Milaird?’ The mourning party have reached them, clambering slowly over the tumbled down dyke, its’ forgotten stones a moss covered tribute to the lives they guard.

 

Joe Fraser’s cheeks are pink and parched with hunger, black eyes sombre as he glances at Murtagh shouldering Ian’s body like a new born lamb.

 

Jamie nods as he hears another buzzard begin a soft, low keen over the heather beyond the cave.

 

The air smells of blood and heather and milk as he listens to the nick and slice of the spades, plunging deep within the soft earth that gave with the faintest tug of the heather bristling at being unearthed before time. Around them, the Mackenzie, Fraser and now Murray graves watch on in silence, their ghosts hushed in the sombriety of the moment.

 

The squelch and slap of soggy peat fill the silence as Young Jamie and Fergus come up to meet them, the French boys’ hand on his nephew’s shoulder. Their eyes are filled with an understanding that Jamie wishes they did not have to bear. Young Jamie leans against his chest, the clinging puppy fat of the boys’ shoulder an odd comfort.

 

Fergus stands apart, pale face turned towards the house, hands thrust in the pockets of his breeks. His dark crop of curls catches in the wind, a thin shaft of sunlight catching at his profile, the slowly defining hook of his nose sharp in the grey sky.

 

‘Jamie,' Murtagh’s voice cuts through the hush.

 

He steps forward slowly, cradling the Bible awkwardly over his stick. He had not noticed the weight of the book on the climb, but now it presses against his palms, the weight of family and memory almost unbearable as he swallows back the dread lodged in his throat.

 

He is not ready to say goodbye to the man whom he had called a brother.

 

A man who had been a husband, a father, a Laird, a presence more part of the fabric of Lallybroch than at times, he was himself.

 

_Ashes to ashes, dust to dust._

Turning to the book of Isaiah, he begins to read, his voice rising and falling with the cry of the wind, the hushed sobs of his nieces, the lone call of a grouse over the hill.  

 

‘ _Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sins have been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.’_

The words come softly, gently to his mind bitterly smarting the wound of loss dug deep against his heart.

 

Ian was dead, the man who had been a brother to him was dead and by his doing as much as that of the Red Coat platoon who had shot him.

 

Another shudder of desperate rage courses through him and he shifts the Bible so that his hands face palm upwards, the lines and scars of his life burning against the skin in gesture of surrender.

 

The words that he had been searching for, come quietly, forming themselves gently against his mind’s eye as he reaches the point in the service in which they are needed.

 

They come by habit, so gently that he had not been aware of them until his tongue begins to curl, listening to the echo murmured across his congregation

 

‘… _Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’_

But he would not forgive, he hears his soul cry in the intermittent silence.

 

Educated in Paris, he is still a Highlander; his soul bitter and dark and bloody for vengeance. And yet it was vengeance that he was unable to give, with mouths to feed and bairns to keep alive. Not yet.

 

‘I will avenge ye mo ghraidh.’

A single white rose falls into the grave with the final Amen, the wind rising in a chilling lament as Joe Fraser and Geoff Kirby begin to dig.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticism etc are like chocolate to my brain.
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> Song suggestions: The Losing Side of History (Outlander Season 1 OST) and Moch Sa Mhadainn (Outlander Season 2 OST)


	9. Epilogue II: 1950

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a moment of solitude at the Church of St Finbar, Claire attempts to make peace with the old ghosts that make up her memories of 1746.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this!
> 
> Your feedback is utterly invaluable and I am so sorry that this chapter has taken so long to write, I have been very busy and have barely had time to give it the time that it deserves until now.

Epilogue

Part II

1950 (Boston)

She wanders through the house in a sort of daze, Brianna’s weight hot and heavy in her arms. Her body is aching with exhaustion, not even the soft notes of milk and bread and honey that clung to the baby’s skin able to pull her from her stupor.

 

Dusky morning light clings to the windows, golden drops of dust filtering through the kitchen window overlooking the hydrangeas, the flowers parched and faded with lack of moisture. _She would have to water them soon,_ she thinks abstractedly, feeling the piercing periodic shriek that had propelled her out of bed with all the force and fear of the air-raid sirens during the war, whimper back into a snuffling murmur, slanted eyes still screwed tightly shut.

 

‘You are my own,’ she murmurs, softly shifting her daughter’s weight into a more comfortable position, pressing her nose into the crook of her neck. The light plays against the soft, red fuzz that scattered against her daughter’s head, sparkled with the pearls and diamond drops of her tears.

 

_‘Jamie_ ,’ her heart cries out in the silence; rising above Frank’s voice that played with the sound of running water and the husky throttle of ‘Rule Britannia.’

 

‘ _You have a daughter,’_ her heart weeps again, feeling Brianna begin to snuffle for milk; her breasts suddenly aching with longing, the button nose sharp with hunger pangs.

 

‘ _You have a daughter mo_ _chiride’,_ she thinks, suddenly, desperately. Despite her lack of the Gaelic, she can remember that much; the word a soft kiss against her lips.

 

There is an urgent hope to the thought, the words filled with the desperate fear and longing, and the struggle to contain them both.

 

‘ _You have a daughter and she…  She is the most beautiful thing!’_

She hears the click of the shower turning off from the bathroom, the hum of the radio, Frank’s soft groan as he stretched himself, the soft thud of a towel being pulled from the heated rail.

 

The soft pad of wet footsteps and the sharp, whistled notes of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, bring her back. Back to the weight of her daughter, suddenly squalling at being ignored, words of comfort rising without thought to her lips.

 

‘Oh, you precious darling!’ She hugs Brianna closer, the link between child and mother suddenly taut, the action one more of protection than love. _For this child was not Frank’s. This child did not belong to the Randall dynasty, did not belong to the same line that held Black Jack Randall, with his sharp, leering face and choking aura of lavender water, to the past._

_This child, this precious ball of life that she had cradled and wished for in the long, dark days before Culloden, was a Fraser child. Was Jamie’s child, the only thing left to her of him; of their final, desperate embrace; the weight of his hands against her shoulders, the firm-knit muscles running taut and lean against his chest, the shudder of sensation running taut and aching through the lines and bends of fingers._

_His voice a husky, desperate whisper against the nape of her neck, the planes of his face stark in the sunset’s dying light._

_‘This child… _This child… is all that will be left of me. Ever. I ask ye, Claire, I beg you, see it safe.’_  _

‘Claire? Is everything alright?’

 

She is suddenly acutely aware that aside from the towel wrapped firmly around his waist, he is naked, that this is the first time she has seen his body since they made their home in Boston after he had accepted a position at Harvard and she had been discharged from the hospital in Inverness.

 

His eyes, as dark as his ancestors, flick from her to the child, the expression going suddenly soft with understanding.

 

‘Everything’s fine, thank you darling,’ her voice sounds suddenly strained as she tries to smile. Tries to feel the warmth that had radiated between them on the day of their marriage, on the day that they had walked arm in arm, fisted hands swinging to the beat of an unknown melody into the reception of the bed and breakfast in Inverness.

 

He nods, eyes flicking to Brianna and back again, the soft hazel irises filled with a tenderness felt for his daughter and his daughter alone.

 

‘May I hold her?’

 

She tries to smile, unlatching their daughter’s hold on her shoulder and turns to face him, seeing the slight greying fringes at the temples, his face still hard and fine, though now with an almost alarmingly distinguished air about it. Frank turns his back on her, hoisting Brianna up against his bare shoulder, a faint murmur rising tunelessly as he rocked the child that was not and never could be his.

 

Her heart aches at the sight, weeping pitifully at the thought of Jamie holding his daughter; a faded memory of him propped up on the sofa in hall at Lallybroch, rocking little Kitty Murray to sleep in the early quiet of the morning rising without warning before her eyes.

 

A nighean nan gamhna,  
Bha mi ma ‘riut,  
A nighean nan gamhna,  
A nighean nan gamhna  
Bha mi ma’ riut,  
Anns a chrò  
‘Us cach nan cadal,  
A hùbh a hó!

 

The rise and fall of the Gaelic cadances had wrapped themselves warm and soft against Jamie’s mouth as the music fades, leaving her stark and open, reeling from the impact of the memory.

 

Outside the window, the life on Furey Street, the life that she had returned to so reluctantly is beginning to unravel. The pale grey dawn sky is slowly unlocking itself into a blaze of uncompromising blue, the hum of crickets, the rumble of tires against the slowly heating tarmac. The glow of yellow phosphor is slowing fading, lighting the shower of sun dust flicking against the window.  

 

Her body, momentarily relieved of its’ burden, slumps against the window as she watches Frank softly hum his way towards the kitchen, Bree’s squalling cries slowly subsiding into a contented gurgle as the squelch and slap of wet feet reach the kitchen.

 

Pressed against the window, she hugs herself, arms reaching protectively around to grip her aching breasts. Bree had not taken milk well that night, nursing and fussing in the quiet, clammy wet patches of spittle soaking her nightgown, soggily dripping into her sin. Her russet head and turned from side to side against her breast, her mouth groping wide like a fish and then clamping shut, unable to take milk but desperately wanting it.

 

‘Lord,’ she whispers, half hearing but not focusing on the piercing whistle of the stove top kettle as Frank made coffee, the battered radio crackled into life and Bree began to hum a tuneless babble.

 

‘O Lord, I commend to Your mercy the soul of Your servant, James,’ the words are whispered into the sudden stillness of the house, words said in desperate prayer for a man and the memory of his child and the other child, now lost in memory.

 

_‘And mine’,_ her heart whispers. ‘ _And Bree. And Faith. Amen.’_

 

_She has not thought of Faith, that life extinguished before it had even had a chance to ignite, since she had stepped through the stones._

_She had not been able to bear it, thinking about the life that had been lost, the fleeting life that had been filled with such promise which she had held for that brief moment in L’Hopital des Anges. That life that had been baptised ‘Faith’ by Mother Hildegarde and buried in the convent, beneath a marble slab marked with the name and year._

_Had not been able to bear the faint whisper of memory that occasionally came to the surface, a moment broken by fever and desolation as she had lain with her hands resting on the slight concavity of her stomach, her mind reeling at its’ emptiness. Not been able to see the long, lipless mouth of a gargoyle transforming itself slowly into Raymond from beneath the shadowed cowl of his borrowed robe, face dark and worn with concern._

_But she had heard him._

_Heard the last thing he had said to her before he had disappeared into the shadows, shattering the spell that had held them suspended together in a place where neither time nor consequence existed._

_‘Everyone has a colour around them,’ the words had been simple, as if they contained some common knowledge that she had did not have access to. ‘All around them, like a cloud. Yours is blue, madonna. Like the Virgin’s cloak. Like my own.’_

*

 

That evening she walks the streets of the neighbourhood, the bricks and asphalt of Furey Street rising in great waves of heat around her.

 

Bree was spending the evening with Mrs Munsing, their nearest neighbour; a kindly widower with tortoiseshell rimmed glasses and a slight Manadrin lilt to her voice and Frank, cool in shirt sleeves, was spending another late night at the university.

 

She walks with both hands dug deep in the pockets of her coat, the heat cooling through the thin cotton cardigan that she wore. The suburb is filled with the quiet hum of a late summer evening, but she hardly hears it. She has a place to go after all and she does not want to be distracted by the calling of one of their aquaintances, often wives of Frank’s university colleagues, wanting a small catch up as the sun sank over the asphalt.

 

_How different it was from the blazing sunsets that she remembers from the Highlands! That sunset that had lit the stone circle at Craigh na Dune, bringing Jamie to her for the last time; his face stark and shadowed in the fading light, eyes filled with the agony of his final request._

_How muted from the fire that lit the heather, the purple flowers blazing against clouds glowering with the promise of rain. How different from the summer dim that had covered the hills glowering over Lallybroch and their campsites, dusting it in a strange, speckled half-light so that the world seemed never in day nor night._

 

Pushing the memories back, she swallows the lump in her throat and presses on to the Church of St Finbar, hoping that there at least she will able to find solace.

 

She knows that the chapel would be locked at this hour, hugging her arms against the thin cotton of her cardigan, to prevent vandalism and burglary. Knows that there was a push-button lock set just below the door handle for late adorers.

 

By pushing three of the buttons in the correct order, she would gain lawful entry; the secret locked away like so many of the others that she cannot give voice to.

 

The knave is hushed in dusky summer light as she enters, coughing quietly to alert the late-night adorer of her presence. They nod in silent recognition and turn back to the alter, eyes fixed on the Sacrament, a great golden sunburst rising through the dusk.

 

Her footsteps echo in the quiet, the ghosts of past and future, the guardians of memory and forgetfulness rising before her, leading her way along a path to somewhere she does not know.

 

Ghosts of memory float unbidden around her, rising from the grounds of dream and silence.

 

_Memories of Dougal Mackenzie’s life blood seeping into the attic floor of Culloden House, Jamie’s dirk plunged deep into his heart._

_Memories of Jamie standing stock still over his uncle’s body, a shuddering shadow against the intermittent light that flickered through the skylight._

_Memories of blood crusted nails digging into her scalp, fingers trembling as they carded her hair, clinging to her like a sailor to a scrap of rope. His breaths had come in short, ragged gasps, his eyes wide and faraway; looking for all the world like a man who was about to faint._

_‘You have the courage of a lion, mo duinne’,_ he had murmured in her ear, the words rising through the mists of time. Words caught with the sweet, musty tang of sweat; blood rising, running too fast through his veins.

 

_How she wishes she had that courage now!_

 

Two tapered candles flank the sacrament that burnt steadily through the night. Their flames seem to catch her, pulling her into the glowing, white heart of their fire; a place where neither space nor time existed.

 

Fixed on the flames, her eyes flicker shut, all desire to think falling away, leaving in its place a bone-crushing fatigue, a deep desire to curl up against the prayer kneeler and allow her body to be carried away into oblivion.

 

But even as she feels it the constant tug of motherhood seems to lessen, the gut-wrenching guilt and pain regarding Jamie fading into a hum of background noise, no louder than the thudding of her heart.

 

She stays for a few moments more, feeling the enormity of the quiet consume her, the pull of memory enveloping her like a cloak before rising and nodding to the altar. moving without thinking to the statue of St Anthony. The wood is cool and warn under her fingers, deep red yew soft from the warmth of years of supplicating fingers.

 

St Anthony, the patron saint of lost things.

 

Like her relationship with Frank, she thinks.

 

Like her place in this world that was so unlike the one that she had left when she had fled into the stone circle; the wind whipping about her airsaid, the sticky wetness of Jamie’s seed still damp against her thighs, the clash of metal and stench of blood ringing in her ears.

 

Like the man whom she had left, the salt of his kiss ripe in her mouth, his final words suddenly burning in her ear as if he were beside her still and not lost to the mists of time.

 

‘ _Name him Brian, for my father.’_

Turning away from the saint, she fixes her gaze on the blessed Sacrament and repeats the prayer that has played on her lips every time she has come to the chapel, the image of the man she loves, the man whose ring she still wears, rising huge and distant before her eyes.

 

_Lord, I command unto you the soul of your servant James._

* * *

 

**_Fin_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review!
> 
> Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain1
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> P.S The lullaby that Jamie 'sings' is the Skye Water Kelpie's lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review!
> 
> Comments, suggestions, constructive criticism etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


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